


motel bibles

by drivingnotwashing



Series: roadside gospel [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (like most spn deaths lets be honest), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dean Winchester Has Issues, Grief/Mourning, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Past Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Pining, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Sam Winchester Has Powers, Season/Series 06, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn, Soulless Sam Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, The Winchester Gospels (Supernatural), Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26950210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drivingnotwashing/pseuds/drivingnotwashing
Summary: The package arrived at Lisa's house eight months, seven weeks, five days and thirty-eight hours after Dean’s lost his brother, inside of it, he found the entire collection of the Supernatural series written by a now presumed dead Carver Edlund and no note, nothing that would tell him how or why the fuck someone had taken the time to deliver his entire life story to his new address in Cicero.Without a clue of what to do and numbed by grief, Dean starts reading and with each book, he discovers something new about his little brother, and some other things about himself too.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: roadside gospel [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020145
Comments: 101
Kudos: 126





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first spn i've ever been brave enough to post and the first time i've written about sam/dean but spn is ending and 2020 is literally testing my will to live so here we go. a few notes about this story before i start:
> 
> \- this takes place directly after swan song and will move into season 6 with a few divergences while still tying most plot points to actual episodes (because there's some angst to explore with episodes like you can't handle the truth, etc) HOWEVER, i refuse to believe bobby wouldn't have called dean if he had known sam was alive, that's just bad character writing, so bobby has no idea sam is alive, neither does dean and soulless!sam is just, running around america with samuel because that's convenient for me right now.
> 
> \- the story starts with dean and lisa being an item but doesn't end that way at all and while i like lisa as a character, im not going to go in depth about her life or how she feels about this entire situation, same thing for ben. they're in the characters list because they are there in the story but they have very little importance in this plot and im sorry about that because lisa braeden deserved better.
> 
> \- i chose to no put any archive warnings because i honestly have no idea how some things will be written BUT, i'm going to talk about fucked up things that have happened directly in spn, so be ready for murder, torture, consent issues in regard of possession, etc. also, im going to just throw it out there: it's been pretty heavily implied in the show that lucifer has sexually abused sam so that might also make an appearance here. if any of these things make you uncomfortable, i'll try to put a warning in the start of any chapters where it is talked about but please proceed carefully.
> 
> \- castiel makes a few appearances in the story and while i have no particular issues with castiel, he does some fucked up things in season 6 (especially towards the end) and so this might come out as castiel critical at some points, don't take this as character hate, it's just... well... castiel does fuck sam over quite a bit and nobody is happy about that, least of all dean.
> 
> \- in a similar fashion, john winchester isn't in this story but he's mentioned quite a few times under sam's point of view (or dean's) and while i do think he loved his sons and his sons loved him, the winchester family business is basically a child abuse trauma park so it might read as john winchester critical.
> 
> \- in lucifer's case it's ENTIRELY character hate and he has no redeeming qualities, fuck that dude. 
> 
> \- i have NOT watched any spn episodes after season 9 because honestly fuck that shit, so if some early spn lore has changed since then i have no idea and im still working on 2005!spn rules.
> 
> now im done! thank you for reading this very long note and have fun with this boatload of angst! - dnw

The package arrived at Lisa's house eight months, seven weeks, five days and thirty-eight hours after Dean’s lost his brother. Truth be told he wouldn’t have known the exact moment Sam jumped in the Cage if he hadn’t asked Castiel on the drive back to South Dakota, at that moment he hadn’t been sure why exactly he needed to know so badly, it had been the first thing he’d said, the first words that passed his lips after, but he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling of importance that was scratching at his heart; he needed to know, he just had to. And afterwards, when Bobby and Castiel had to literally drag him out of the Impala and carry him to the sofa, just so he could fall numbly and let them wipe his own blood off his neck and hands and chest, he had started counting. 

One day went by and the only thing he could do was count the seconds, he let Bobby feed him, just like a child, just like he had fed Sam when he was so very small and he couldn’t old his spoon straight without dribbling applesauce down his front, and Dean counted. Sometimes he’d look at his watch, which miraculously hadn’t broken even when Lucifer had thrown him across the car, but most of the time he’d just stare at the ceiling and let the time drop by him, aware of it sliding down like rain on a windshield.

By the time he started counting in weeks, Castiel had given his little goodbye speech and Bobby had grown sick of his apathy, leaving had been the logical thing to do. It hadn’t even been that painful, pain was something Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever really feel again, he’d gathered all of his things up in one duffle bag, the ones he had taken out of the Impala a while back when he and Sam had started living at the Salvage, and then he’d picked up all of _Sam’s_ things, the ones his little brother hadn’t already tidied up the night before they’d gone to Detroit, because even then Sam had tried to make it easier, had tried to take the weight of his decision off Dean’s grieving shoulders. But some flannels had made their way deeper in the bathroom’s pile of dirty clothes, some books had been thrown under Sam’s bed without his knowledge because he’d probably fallen asleep on them and there was Sam’s computer bag, the caramel brown leather bag that he’d carried with him since long before Stanford, sitting under Bobby’s desk. It made sense, in his last days Sam hadn’t done a lot of research.

When Dean had finally left South Dakota, his need to count the time had stopped making him nauseously melancholic, and it became comforting in a way. The minutes weren’t getting longer and Dean was making his way to a motel for the night before the 43200 count, he would sleep more hours than he’d been awake for them and he could call that a victory. He didn’t dream and maybe if he had trusted his mind to not throw horror back at him, he’d been sad about it, no dreams meant that in every dimension he lived in, Sam was gone but it was better this way. No dreams also meant that he didn’t have to watch Sam fall, he didn’t have to watch Sam get stabbed in the back; he didn’t have to watch Sam cry and bleed and die again and again and again. 

After the first month, _2628000 seconds_ his mind whispered, he’d read as many books on resurrection as he did on reincarnation, he’d powered through essays after essays on spiritual rebirth and he even started calling metaphysical experts, the ones he’d have broken the teeth of months ago. He was keeping psychics on speed dials and he was learning German on Sam’s computer just to read the terrible manuscripts of a man living in Leipzig and who swore that he’d come back from Hell. Unsurprisingly, every single thing he tried was a dead end and while it was expected, it didn’t stop him from tearing down his motel room, breaking the lamps and chairs and table, leaving splinters buried in his knuckles and tears forming in his eyes that he didn’t know how to let fall. 

After the fifth month, of which two of them had been spent hunting everything that came his way with growing brutality, Dean had to finally respect his brother’s last wish, even though the idea of staining Lisa’s porch with the blood and savagery that had seeped into his bones disgusted him to a whole new level he took the road to Indiana because he had promised he would and there was nothing in this world Dean wouldn’t have done for his brother, nothing at all. When he arrived to Cicero, a gun still strapped to his lower back and a silver knife tucked in his boot, he let himself stop counting, just for a moment, when Lisa took him in her arms and told him he’d be okay, that he could stay. He tried afterwards to not feel guilty for those few missed minutes, he tried to break the cycle and not calculate how much time he had lost, because if he could try to stop this newfound mania of his soon enough then maybe he could try to move around Lisa’s house like a person and not a snivelling creature but the lost minutes were driving him crazy and by the end of the first week in Cicero, he had filled an entire section of his father’s journal with just desperate estimations and even more desperate math to back his assumptions. He settled on six minutes and fifty-four seconds but they always felt wrong.

The seventh month came and with it came Christmas with its non-ghost induced flickering lights and smells of nutmeg and brown sugar. Sam had fallen in May, just a few days after his twenty-seventh birthday and the last time they had stopped to celebrate Christmas together, Dean had been the one staring at Hell straight in the face, the memory made him want to crawl out of his skin. Lisa bought him new shirts and a drill, Ben made him a frame in his woodwork class, the gifts were as wonderful as heartbreaking. The only gift Sam had ever gifted him that didn’t come from a gas station had been abandoned in a motel room in a town he didn’t even remember the name of, Dean wanted to claw at the space on his chest where the amulet used to belong, he wanted to feel the smooth edges of its horns dig into his sternum and he wanted to feel the coppery steel heat at the contact of his skin, instead, he kissed Lisa’s lips and ruffled Ben’s hair with a smile that didn’t really reach his eyes.

The package arrived a month after that, exactly on the 24th of January, just in time for his birthday. Ben was the one who brought it to him in the early morning before Dean could even take his first sip of coffee, the carton box was almost taller than the eleven-year-old boy and when he let it fall in front of the breakfast table, Lisa gasped, her eyes huge as she read out the scribbled down note. There was no return address, no name except for Dean’s and before he could worry about the potential dangers that the package presented, Ben was yanking the flaps of the box open.

The box didn’t contain any weapons or strange monster bits, to Ben’s apparent disappointment, but it didn’t mean that what was actually inside of it made much more sense. When Dean reached down, his fingers grazed a smooth, plastic slick surface and when he pulled it out, his eyes met the cover of a book.

Carver Edlund’s first book of his Supernarutal series, the _pilot_ of the Winchesters’ Gospel stared at Dean and he let out a stunned chuckle. He kept the book in his hand and with the other dug deeper into the box, grabbing more and more books, that he set on the table next to the eggs and bacon he had just cooked a few minutes ago. He started stacking them when he no longer could spread them in front of him and with each new book added to the piles Lisa’s voice grew louder with concern. He didn’t answer her, he didn’t know what he could possibly say but when he finally scooped the last book out of the package, he turned to her, an apology on his lips. She didn’t calm down after he told her what the books were, instead, she gulped her orange juice, wiped her hands on her nightgown and hauled Ben out of the room. Dean didn’t follow them out of the room, he cleared the table, he even put the leftovers in Tupperwares and cleaned the dishes before he went back to the books.

There were no notes, no tacky _Happy Birthday_ card that would have given Dean a hint of whoever the fuck had decided to purchase one hundred four of his shitty biographies but he could take a wild guess. This had angel bullshit written all over it, not the Castiel type of bullshit, but maybe some other feathery jackass had decided to torture him, to remind him of this part of his life that he had now buried in Sull Cemetery. He always threw them outside to burn but then he remembered with an almost concerning clarity that the last time he and Sam had checked, only sixty books had been published. 

The series ended with him dying, their gospel stopped being monetized after _No Rest For The Wicked,_ it was a done deal, where the fuck had the other forty-four books come from? He’d have known if more of his life had been broadcasted to the world, which meant that these books were classified, they hadn’t been made public but someone had taken care of presenting them with the same gaudy if not downright sleazy soap opera cover as the rest of the series. Yeah, this was just screaming angel mojo now.

He had to call Bobby or even pray to Cas and see if anyone had any idea of why someone had left this on Lisa’s doorsteps, but first, he had to put this away and try to fix the little piece of normal he’d cultivate here and that started by making good with Lisa and driving Ben to school, the books could wait, the minutes weren’t getting longer, he was still counting.


	2. Chapter 2

Calling Bobby had been a bad idea, which wasn’t something Dean thought he’d _ever_ say but he had also never thought that one day he’d be driving a Nissan or go play golf on the weekends with his work buddies so really, he should have expected that all of his past no longer made sense and that the new normal was a pile of shit

He had started by Bobby because praying to Castiel always made him uneasy, he didn’t like praying just by principle and he didn’t know if he was ready to have the angel pop up behind him in complete silence with just the change of tension in the air to announce his presence. Also, Bobby was safe, Bobby was the type of conversation Dean could have and not feel like his voice sounded wrong, like his imitation of a man wasn’t cutting it and he was exposed to the world as this sort of sewed back together skin and meat shell. Talking to Lisa was getting easier but the rest of the world made him uncomfortable, but Bobby was just as rough as he was and Dean could handle rough, he’d been made of rough.

“You’re telling me you got an entire free library section delivered at your door and you don’t know where it comes from, that’s what’s got you calling for the first time since you left?”

Dean frowned and if he hadn’t known Bobby, he’d almost said that the man sounded hurt, “I called you on Christmas.” He replied.

Bobby’s voice was coarse like sandpaper, “No, I called you on Christmas, I called you on Thanksgiving too and I even called you on fucking Labor’s day because you can’t seem to pick up your goddamn phone to let me know how you’re doing.”

Something nasty and mean curled on Dean’s tongue but he swallowed it down, “I’m fine, I’m sorry I haven’t called, I’ve been busy.” It wasn’t a lie, not entirely, he was standing and talking which he considered fine in all things considered, but it didn’t seem to be enough. He always seemed to fall short recently.

“Yeah, sure you are, your brother’s been dead for eight months but you’re _fine_.” 

Now the evil thing that Dean had tried to keep down was slithering from his throat to his chest and he wanted to do damage, he wanted to grab Bobby’s throat through the phone and back him against a wall to choke him out. Dead. He said dead. And what was worse than the word itself was the fact that it was a lie. Sam wasn’t dead, Sam hadn’t gotten to die, he’d gotten thrown in the worst part of Hell, alive and hurting for the rest of eternity. Dead was something Dean could have dealt with, he’d have sold his soul down to the last second, he’d have cracked Sam’s grave open with dark spells powerful enough to make all the dead in Lawrence rise, he’d have open the gates of Hell again just to get his brother back. But Sam wasn’t dead, he was locked away, captive forever. 

“I needed time,” He said instead of the insults that were burning the tip of his tongue, “I still need time, I just called because this fucking stinks paranormal bullshit that I’m not equipped to take care of anymore and I needed help, something _you_ said I could always call you for.”

Bobby didn’t answer for a while and then, “You’re not the only one grieving, son. You’re not the only one who needs time or help.”

Dean ended the call after that, his hands shaking with relentless anger and he almost heaved his phone to the wall, he only stopped because he knew he’d have to explain it to Lisa and he wasn’t certain he could deal with two human conversations in the same day. 

He had lunch after, he was still furious which explained why his pasta was overcooked and why the sauce he’d tried to make from scratch stuck to the bottom of the pan, but he fed himself and cleaned his mess because he was _fine_ , it’d been eight months, seven weeks, six days and eleven hours since Sam had jumped in the cage and Dean was fine. 

Bobby called him back three hours later while he’d been trying to decide if he should finally man up and pray to Castiel while mowing the lawn, when he saw the caller ID, he hesitated and then he remembered that Bobby was pretty much all he had left and that no amount of cold words exchanged between them was worth losing what was left of his family.

“If it’s angels, Castiel doesn’t know about it,” Bobby announced before Dean could even say hello, “It took him more time than usual to come around, they’re having a bit of a scuffle up in Heaven apparently, but he said that he heard nothing about an angel leaving the gospel at your door so whoever did it didn’t have feathers.”

Dean let out a breath, “Bobby, thank yo-”

“There hasn’t been any sort of demon omen near Cicero either so this isn’t demon business and I don’t know any breed of monster who’d give you books before trying to eat you, so you’re on your own here, I’m out of answers.”

“Bobby-”

“Now, if you want to research deeper, this might be more of a humanoid thing, maybe a very peculiar witch or minor deity trying to pass a message, I have no idea, just read the books and try to find the signs, I guess, that’s all I have.”

“Bobby,” Dean finally said, guilt bubbling in his gut, “I’m sorry.” The other man didn’t reply and Dean sighed, hunters could be so damn stubborn when they wanted to. “I know that I haven’t been there for you and you’ve been here for me plenty, and for that I’m sorry, really.” Still no answer, he rubbed his jaw in frustration, “I’ll try to come around Sioux Falls soon, maybe you can even meet Lisa and the kid. I’ll even cook, I can make a meaner Chili than yours now,” He joked and when he heard a muffled snigger, he felt his shoulders unwind.

“We’ll see about that, kid.” Bobby laughed, the gravelly warmth of his voice making Dean smile, this was familiar, this was the normal he needed. “Start reading those books in the meantime and call if you find anything.”

“I will, I promise.” This was another one he didn’t intend to break. 

This time, he set his phone on the coffee table calmy, his anger finally soothed. He felt better about it too, he could never stay angry at Bobby, the man had this tranquillizing effect on him ever since he’d been a kid, it had almost shattered him when his dad had said that they couldn’t go back to Singer’s Salvage anymore and that they couldn’t go to Bobby’s for the Summer either. Sam had cried big ugly tears, he’d put snot all over Dean’s shirt and when he’d finally calmed down, he’d asked with this heartbreaking hope if they could see Rumsfeld again if Bobby wasn’t here, because Sam could lose one friend in a day but not two. When dad had said no again, Dean had needed to hold his brother down as he sobbed, his trembling eight-year-old body so wobbly and small on the Impala’s backseat.

The memory wasn’t a pleasant one but Dean guessed this was something he’d better get used to quickly, he now had over a hundred copies of unpleasant memories to go through. He cracked the spine of Pilot and sat down, leaving his feet fall on the coffee table and letting himself try to read this as clinically as possible. He knew that was hopeless when, after eight months, seven weeks, six days and fourteen hours since his brother jumped in the cage, the very first words of the Winchesters’ gospel were; “ _Sam was no longer sleeping when Mary started burning.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter will be longer and will actually start the story, these two first chapters were pretty much just introduction, but i hope you enjoyed them either way!
> 
> -dnw


	3. Chapter 3

_Sam was no longer sleeping when Mary started burning, his hazel eyes were open wide as his mother slid up on the ceiling, a scream of terror lodged in her throat. He didn’t know what was happening, he was only 6 months old after all, but he did know that he was scared and that when he cried Dean would come running._

_Dean was his older brother, he was four and he was brave and even in the hazy thoughts only a 6-month-old child could muster, he knew Dean would save him, save Mommy and so he cried, as loud as he could and waited for his brother to fix everything._

Dean had to close the book for a while, just hide the words for a few minutes as he tried to not let the wave of emotions that were threatening to spill overtake him. He couldn’t read this part, he couldn’t read what seemed to be Sam’s first memories, especially when he knew how this night ended. He hadn’t been the one to run to his brother’s room that night, Dad had, he’d been there later, when the heat at started making him itchy and sweaty in his sleep, and he’d waddled barefoot towards Sammy’s room because he wanted to make sure that his little brother wasn’t too warm. He’d seen Dad in the corridor and then everything had happened so fast, he’d carried Sam out of the house, the weight of his crying brother had been the only thing that had made sense of a while, even after when the dust had settled and Dad had strapped them down in the Impala. Sammy had been the only thing on his mind and it had taken him a lot longer than it should have to start crying about his mother, because at least Sammy was safe, Sammy was okay, Dean hadn’t lost everything.

He opened the book again but skipped the first chapter and settled for the second, the one soberly called _Stanford_.

_Sam hated Halloween with a passion, he wasn’t entirely certain of when the general dislike he usually felt had transformed into an actual deep hatred but it was there alright and if not for Jessica’s insistence, he’d already gone to bed and slept the entire night off._

“Nerd,” Dean snorted.

_Tomorrow he wouldn’t be welcomed to class by an overly enthusiastic teacher dressed as a party city vampire, tomorrow he could go back to living in a world where monsters, plastic or real, didn’t exist, tomorrow would be a blessed day and he really wanted to get to it as quickly as possible. But Jess had begged and begged and won, she had kissed his jaw and called him baby and he couldn’t have said no to that because his hatred for Halloween might have been deep but his love for Jessica was deeper._

_He had met her two years ago, just after he’d barely turned 20 and she’d walked into his life with boisterous confidence and easy conversation that made Sam long for her in a way that had made him a little breathless. It hadn’t helped his case either that she’d been the only one to make him laugh as loud as Dean had and he still missed his brother so much that after only one discussion with her, he’d felt addicted to her presence. His friend Brady had introduced them at a party and the very next day, Sam had walked all across the campus to deliver her coffee and see her smile._

_She was tall, blonde, funny and clever with eyes that sparkled green and gold, she had drunk her coffee with a smirk painted on her glossy lips and by the end of the week, Sam had taken her on five dates and told her that he was in love. The fact that she hadn’t run the other way had already been surprising but when she told him she loved him back and let him take off her turquoise blouse on the seedy couch of his dorm, he’d know he was done for._

It was a weird thing to read about Jessica Moore and how she had made Sam so happy when Dean already knew what would happen to her. It made him queasy because back then she had just been a pretty face that he had too little time to get to know, he’d seen how her loss had impacted his brother but he hadn’t been able to share his pain, he hadn’t gotten to know her, she’d been dead before he could even entertain the idea. It was also another kind of strange to read about yourself through the eyes of somebody else and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He hadn’t known that Sam had still been thinking about him while he was at Stanford, he’d been so certain that his brother had shut down all parts of his past to fit in. He continued reading.

_And now he was proven right, because Halloween was his nightmare on Earth and yet he didn’t complain when she dragged him to the nearest club, he only watched her nurse hat sway in the wind and let her borrow his jacket when she finally admitted that sexy costumes were not November weather ready._

_“So here's to Sam,” Jess started, a shot of tequila in one hand, the other in Sam’s, “And his awesome LSAT victory.”_

_Sam felt his face heat up, “All right, all right, it's not that big a deal.”_

_He clinked his glass with Jess and Luis, a friend of his who took the same Latin classes. He didn’t have to take Latin classes, it wasn’t the type of surface knowledge law firms cared about, but he took them anyway because the part of him that had salted the door and windows of his dorm for two years wouldn’t let him become rusty. It was the same part of him that pushed him to go work out in the morning and made him clean his gun and polish silver knives when Jess was out with her friends. Some people would call it paranoia, Sam called it professional habits._

_Jess kept going, “Yeah, he acts all humble but he scored a one seventy-four.” She was always so proud of him, even when he felt like he was doing enough. Dean had been that way too, always congratulating him for a good shot or a nice knife throw. Sam wondered idly what Dean would have said about his LSATs, he drowned the idea just as quickly as he thought it. Dean and he weren’t speaking anymore, he wasn’t even sure what number he could call._

_Luis and Jess talked about him some more and he threw in his to cents about a future law school he was happy about the Monday meeting and Jess once again was overly confident about it but he wasn’t, he never was when it was about the future._

_Luis’ ghoul makeup was not nearly close to accurate and when he talked again, a flap of fake latex fell from his chin, “How does it feel to be the golden boy of your family?”_

_“Ah, they don't know,” Sam replied, and wasn’t that all the problem? Even here, in California, miles and miles away from John, he still felt like he had to prove something, to make his father proud. But he never had and he never would, being a lawyer wasn’t what made hunters proud._

It hurt to read in a whole new different way, even though he had known this part, Sam had told him so himself that he had always thought that Dad was disappointed in him, that he had felt like a freak in his own family, and yet reading it made Dean’s eyes sting. It was a cruel reminder that even at twenty years old and down to twenty-seven, Sam had never truly felt like he belonged.

He skipped a few more paragraphs, more of Sam’s inner dialogue where he thought about calling his friend Brady again to make sure he wasn’t overdoing Halloween, and gosh that was another can of worms Dean was not ready to open. He also skipped some more descriptions of the club because he truly didn’t care about Chuck’s prose about cheap plastic spiders and pumpkins candy buckets, but he read the last lines of the chapter and felt his heart bleed a little.

_Sam smiled at Jessica, a hand on her cheek, making its way to her soft hair, “What would I do without you?”_

_“Crash and burn.” She huffed, pleased and happy, before he dipped over the table, her words felt prophetic, he kissed them away._

“They were,” Dean said to the empty living room. He flipped the page and started the third chapter.

_Sam was up and awake before he could even register why he’d felt the need to grab the baseball bat they kept next to the bed. All he knew was that a window was open and there were noises, the familiar yet somehow terrifying sound of footsteps strolling in his living room and he could only see the fuzzy shape of a man, a little shorter than he was but with broader shoulders, standing right there in his home._

_The bat was taken off his hands as soon as he tried to knock the man out, that didn’t disturb Sam that much, he’d been trained to think quickly and hold his own in a hand to hand combat, but the man in front of him was quicker than he’d expected and a lot more capable than any regular burglar. The man backhanded him in the face and Sam felt a spike of anger spread, he kicked the man in the chest and tried to get his arms up for the punch he knew would follow, but the man was one step ahead and he grabbed Sam’s wrist before toppling him down and pinning him to the floor with a hard, calloused hand on Sam’s neck._

_“Wow,” The man said, a little breathless, and Sam would have recognised that voice anywhere, “Easy, tiger.”_

_It was his brother, Sam could see his face now that the moonlight was spilling down on them from the window. “Dean?” His brother chuckled, his full lips splitting with a smile that showed more teeth than truly necessary, “You scared the crap out of me!” Sam panted, unconcerned by how young he must have sounded._

_Dean was still holding him by the throat and Sam inhaled the familiar warm cinnamon and leather smell he’d grown to associate to his brother. “That’s because you’re out of practice,” Dean replied, his smile still bright, Sam knocked him over, using all his strength to get a leg around his brother’s torso. “Or not.” Dean chuckled, “Get off me.”_

_Sam helped his brother up, his head was spinning a bit and not from the fight, he was so happy to see Dean, his heart was beating so fast he thought it would burst, but he was worried too, it’d been a long time since he had talked to his older brother and even longer since they’d been in the same room. This wasn’t going to end well, Sam knew it._

_“Well,” Dean said, boisterous confidence similar to Jess’ tainting each word, “I was looking for a beer.”_

_“What the hell are you doing here?” Sam repeated._

_“Okay, alright, we gotta talk.”_

_“Uh, the phone?”_

_“If I had called, would you have picked up?”_

_Sam didn’t get the time to think about it nor to feel guilt for the obvious answer because the lights were now turned on and Jess was standing in the doorway, looking a little scared under the haze of sleep. “Sam?” She was still in her pyjamas, some pink shorts and a Smurf shirt she’d stolen from her younger sister. Sam felt his brother’s stare and he stopped himself from rolling his eyes, god did some habits die hard._

Dean flicked the page with a smirk, he remembered that night, the fight and his terrible flirting with Jessica just to see if he could still rile his brother up, he read the next sentences and groaned a little, he was such a tool here, no wonders Jess had given him the death glare. Still, it made him a little agitated to read a description of his own face and body, especially when Chuck had apparently taken the liberty of making things up, he wouldn’t describe the smell of his sweat like “ _warm cinnamon_ ” and he doubted Sam would either. He skipped the conversation they had about their father, he remembered that talk quite well and Sam didn’t have any interesting inner thoughts on the subject, he’d apparently been just as worried as Dean but was trying to hide it, Dean had been able to read him then too.

He skipped an entire chapter, he did not care about a cheater that had been dead for over five years, he just wanted to read about his brother. It was undoubtedly unhealthy to let himself get engulfed so deeply in the book, it was creepy in so many levels to read about himself and his own memories, especially when the writing was kind of shit, but it was Sam telling the story, it was Sam’s thoughts and Sam’s inner complaints about gas station junk food, it was Sam’s annoyance towards AC/DC and Dean missed it so much it was tearing him in two. 

The way Sam described the Impala, the reverence in his thoughts for the car and how beautiful she was, something he said there he would never admit to Dean and he hadn’t, it was breaking Dean’s heart at the same time as it nuzzled it. He passed over witness interrogations because Sam was too focused there to think about anything else, but he stopped at the seventh chapter, the title Sylvania Bridge bringing back a blurry but sour memory.

_They were walking along the bridge, stopping to lean on the railing and look down at the river, Dean’s green eyes were delving into the dark waters while Sam looked around._

_“So this is where Constance took the swan dive.”_

_“You think Dad would have been there?” Sam asked, looking at his brother, waiting for him to have all the answers just like they were kids._

_“Well, he’s chasing the same story and we’re chasing him.” Dean continued walking, Sam right behind him._

_“Okay,” Sam’s feet were dragging on the bridge’s boards,” Now what?”_

_“Now we keep digging until we find it. Might take a while.”_

_Sam stopped, he knew this would happen, he’d known since the moment he had told Dean about the school, god he had been so stupid, he had wanted so hard to believe that he could have both, a future and a past, that he’d forgotten why he’d left the latter behind in the first place._

_“Dean, I told you. I’ve gotta get back by Monday-”_

_His brother turned around and Sam’s breath caught in his throat. The smile on Dean’s lips was predatory, sweet but deadly in a way only his older brother could master, he was angry and Sam could tell, but Dean was the type to let you stew in your regrets, it was one of the things Sam had never gotten used to._

_“Monday,” Dean said, cutting deep. “Right. The interview.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_"Yeah, I forgot.” He hadn’t they both knew it. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you? You think you’re just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?”_

_Sam hated how it sounded so disgusting in Dean’s mouth, he hated how it all seemed like a lie when Dean said it out loud._

_“Maybe. Why not?” He forced himself to say and he tried not to let the anger and heartache that was making its way to his throat spill._

_“Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean does she know about the things you’ve done?”_

_“No, and she’s not ever going to know.”_

_Dean sneered, “Well that’s healthy.”_

Dean’s fingers caught on the corner of the page, “God, Sammy.” He wanted to make himself shut up, to take it all back because he’d been angry then, so fucking angry and so disappointed and he had needed Sam to stay so badly, to tell him that he was going to just forget about Stanford and forget about Jessica because Dean couldn’t stay alone, it had been killing him then and it was killing him now too but he knew how this book ended, he knew what happened to Jessica and Sam’s law school meeting, he knew now that his brother’s dreams all fell to pieces and he reading about this talk left a taste of ash in his mouth.

_“You can pretend all you want, Sammy.” The nickname drew blood, “But sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to who you really are.”_

_“And who’s that?”_

_Dean turned around once again, canines digging into his bottom lip, “You’re one of us.”_

_“No,” Sam caught up to him, blood pounding in his temples.” I’m not like you. This is not going to be my life.”_

_“You have a responsibility to-”_

_That word, that fucking word, he’d run to California because of that word. Dad would bark speeches and tirades about the responsibilities and duties of the job, “You’re a hunter, Sam,” He’d say and it would spilt Sam open each time, because he wasn’t just that, he never wanted to be just that, he’d been his son before he was a soldier, he wanted to be more than a hunter who died before he could turn thirty. He wanted Dean to stop coming back home with scars that made him look too young and broken, he wanted to find a place where he wouldn’t be afraid to fall asleep without a knife in his pillowcase._

_“To Dad?” He snarled, feral and wild like the child he’d been raised to be, “And his crusade? If it weren’t for pictures I wouldn’t even know what Mom looks like.” He could barely remember her face now, she always became fuzzy in his mind when he wasn’t staring right back at her photographed face, she was just a halo of blond and green and gold. “And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom’s gone. And she isn’t coming back.”_

_His back hit the railing of the bridge, a pillar digging deep in his shoulder blade, Dean had his collar in his fists, his face was pressed close to Sam’s and for one moment, he wondered if this was their breaking point. Sam had thought that they’d already passed it that night, when he left and Dean hadn’t followed, but maybe it was here, in Jericho where the air was heavy and stifling on his neck. Maybe Sam had finally done it, maybe his brother hated him._

_“Don’t talk about her like that.” Dean’s voice was too soft, too sad and Sam thought with a deafening bitterness that if his brother wasn’t hating him now it was just a question of time._

The book was out of his hand and across the room before Dean could stop it. He had hurled it in rage, his face was hot and his hands were spasming closed, he wanted to hit something, someone, maybe even Sam if he had been there because all of this had been so fucked, even then they weren’t able to say what was on their mind and Dean had been so angry, he’d wanted to shake his little brother and ask him why he’d left him behind, why he hadn’t been enough for Sam to stay but it had never been about that, Sam hadn’t run away from Dean, he never had. His brother had run away from danger and fear and the threat of dying before he could become an adult and Dean had been so mad, he’d felt so betrayed that he hadn’t listened when Sam had asked him to come, he had pushed it away because he had his duties and maybe he’d failed taking care of Sammy, maybe he’d pushed him away while trying to protect him but he couldn’t leave Dad and Sam had made his choice, had chosen normality over them.

And it hurt, it made Dean’s eyes water with it, because Sam had wanted both, he’d wanted the safety of a college dorm but it was clear now that he had wanted Dean there too, he’d wanted a family, _his_ family and now it was too late.

He skipped to the end of the novel, if he had to add insult to injury he’d do it quickly, and he let one tear slide from his eye to his cheek before he wiped it away, already back in California and in Sam’s last moment of normality.

_The apartment was dark but Sam could hear the shower running and he could smell the cookies before he even saw the plate._

_“Jess?” He called out, “You home?”_

_He finally found the baked good, grabbing one and smiling at the note next to the plate, Jess had always been very liberal with her declarations of love, it made Sam almost giddy. He walked to his bed, flopping on it with a smile and a sigh, this felt right, good, for the first time in years he felt like all the pieces of himself fit in the right places. Maybe he could do this, maybe he could go to his meeting tomorrow and call Dean afterwards, make sure he found Dad and keep in touch. Maybe once John reappeared he could invite them both here, Jess was always going on about how they never had anyone over, she would be thrilled to bake something for a family dinner and Sam could almost see it, could almost imagine his father eating one of Jess’ cookie while Dean told embarrassing childhood stories. It would take them time but Sam felt hope bloom in his heart. Something fell on his face, a drop then another, and he flinched, opening his eyes, the satisfied sigh he just let out still floating over his mouth._

_Green eyes, blond hair, blood pouring from her belly, her mouth open and her skin grey._

_“No!” This wasn’t real, this couldn’t happen, he’d fallen asleep again, it was just a nightmare, the same one as before._

_Except he always woke up after she burst into flames, he would always wake up before her hair started burning, “Jess!”_

_Someone was hauling him up, warm cinnamon and leather combining with the smell of roasted flesh and burning wood. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t leave her there, he would wake up soon enough, he couldn’t leave her. But the heat was making him suffocate and the taste of cinders melted on his tongue with the remains of chocolate chips._

_Sam hadn’t been sleeping at all this time, when Jessica had started burning._

"Jesus Christ," It had been worse than his expectations, the burning in itself he could read about and try to not let it bring back the images, the ghost of the smell, but reading about Sam's unbridled faith, naive and beautiful, had cracked something in Dean. He needed a break, he needed to maybe drink himself to sleep or go shoot something, but he couldn't stay here where Sam's dreams of dinners with his family and his girlfriend felt like a joke, a terrible one that echoed in Lisa's catalogue perfect living room like a curse. He'd read more books tomorrow, he wasn't sure he could stop even if he wanted to, the written memory of his brother was all he had left and while Sam's pain bore into him like a knife, he'd still take it, he'd take any crumbs of Sam, even the ones that left him bleeding. It was all he had.


	4. Chapter 4

The books became an inherent part of Dean's daily life, he'd read a new one each day, even when he had to go to a new construction site, even when Lisa invited aunts and nephews and he had to spend the afternoon grilling meat and drinking lukewarm beer in the garden, he'd always find the time to fit some reading between the normal apple-pie life activities that now belonged to his routine. He found out soon enough that not all of the Supernatural books were written under Sam's point of view, far from it actually. When he had picked up _Wendigo_ , he'd half hoped, half expected to be welcomed by Sam's brand of sarcastically sad inner monologue, but instead, he'd come face to face with his own thoughts, laid bare on paper and that had made him close the book far more aggressively than needed.

When he had picked it up again and accepted the fact that he would have, at one point, suffer through his own thinking, he'd skipped a lot more parts of the book and only the read through the few scenes where his brother was there. He'd almost forgotten how angry Sam had been after Jessica's death, Dean remembered the nightmares, the sobs that Sam had muffled in his pillow, but this scorching rage, he'd forgotten all about it. Not that it hadn't been directed at him too, Sam had always been generous in his anger, especially as a teenager. Dean had gone from being his baby brother's hero one day, the older brother who could do no wrong and who had all the answers, who could do and fix everything, to being an enemy and a traitor in less than a week when Sam had finally hit puberty. It had taken Dean some time to find his new role in this because he hadn't changed, Sam had and he wasn't sure why that had made him a villain in his brother's mind but from the day Sam turned sixteen, something had broken between them, Sam's rage had taken so much space between them then when his brother had left for Stanford, Dean had barely been able to see him behind his fury and impatience. Still, it wasn't unpleasant to see Sam's sharp wit pointed at someone else, especially an idiot like Roy, the Dean in the book found his brother's ire worrying because it was, but this Dean found his brother's speech about a Wendigo's intelligence versus park rangers' almost amusing. Still, the entire thing was overshadowed by the pain that radiated from Sam and that book Dean had no idea how to alleviate.

_He found his brother near the end of the circle where the runes were starting to turn on themselves like snakes, "You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?" He didn't have to wait for an answer to know that Sam would lie, it was a family thing really, this tendency of saying you were fine when your world was falling to pieces._

_"_ _Dean-"_

_"No," He interrupted, he could take a lot of bullshit, he'd practically invented this self-sacrificing act, but this was not Sam, it couldn't become Sam, "You're not fine. You're like a powder keg, man, it's not like you. I'm supposed to be the belligerent one, remember?"_

_He'd said it because he wanted to make Sam smile, it was all he could think about really, he hadn't seen his brother in years and now that they were back together, it was like Sam wasn't really here, like he was locking parts of himself away and Dean couldn't live with that._

_"Dad's not here." Sam whispered, his hazel eyes shining in the dim light coming from the campfire, "I mean, that much we know for sure, right? He would have left us a message, a sign, right?_

_Dean sighed, "Yeah, you're probably right. Tell you the truth, I don't think Dad's ever been to Lost Creek."_

_"Then let's get these people back to town and let's hit the road." Sam pressed, his voice getting louder and more desperate, "Go find Dad. I mean, why are we still even here?" He broke a branch on his boot and his hands were shaking._

_Dean stared at his brother, he watched the gold in Sam's eyes swirl and stood up, "This is why." He sat in front of his brother, their father's journal in his hands, the leather felt cool under his fingers. "_ _This book. This is Dad's single most valuable possession," Sam's eyes weren't meeting his, "Everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he's passed it on to us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business." He finished, heart beating quickly, it was as close to saying it outright as he ever would go, but he so wanted Sam to want this too._

_"That makes no sense." His brother shook his head, "Why doesn't he just, call us? Why doesn't he tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?"_

_"I dunno. But the way I see it, Dad's giving us a job to do, and I intend to do it."_

_"Dean, no." Sam was closed to tears now, the flickers in his eyes had turned into liquid gold, "I gotta find Dad. I gotta find Jessica's killer. It's the only thing I can think about."_

_"Okay, all right, Sam, we'll find them, I promise." He wanted to grab his brother, to make him look at him and see that Dean meant it, "Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger, you can't keep it burning over the long haul. It's gonna kill you. You gotta have patience, man."_

_Sam took a deep breath, "How do you do it? How does Dad do it?"_

_"Well for one, them." Dean replied, pointing at the civilians with a nod, "_ _I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable."_ _A pause. "_ _I'll tell you what else helps." Sam was finally looking back, pools of gold glimmering, "_ _Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can."_

_The way Sam smiled made it all worth it._

The other books under Dean's point of view were like this too, they went on about Sam's golden eyes like his brother was walking around with glitter on his eyelashes or something and Dean's inner thoughts made him sound like a lost little boy, he sounded especially pathetic in _Dead in the Water_ where the book felt the need to go on and on about Dean's fear of fire and blah blah because it was apparently very important to leave nothing to critical reading and all metaphors had to be written down so Carver Edlund's dumb readers could jack themselves off to the grand symbolism of a little boy losing his dad and fearing the water and Dean, a not so little boy who'd lost his mom in a fire. Yes, great, thank you Chuck, you really nailed him there.

It didn't get better in _Phantom Traveler_ where he spent an entire section of the last chapter paralysed from fear in the corner of the plane. He wasn't sure why anyone would find him compelling as a character there, but Sam had said before that when it came to his own nature, Dean had issues being objective. Either way, he was getting tired of his own face and thoughts, he was desperately looking for the next Sam book and he groaned in frustration when even _Bloody Mary_ had been written from his mind, which he would have complained about to Chuck himself if the prophet would just pick up his damn phone, what kind of idiot decided to write about Dean's meeting with the cops when Sam was battling his own murderous reflection behind the door, no wonders the series' publisher had gone bankrupt. 

His prayers, not actual prayers just an expression, were answers in Skin, but he quickly started regretting it, be careful what you wish for and all that jazz, because sure, he loved, genuinely loved, reading through a few college flashbacks, only there to apparently give the reader an exposition of who Rebecca and Zack were, but the moment Sam walked back to the Impala, the shapeshifter wearing Dean's face in toe, he knew he was going to hate what followed.

_Sam woke up in a dark room, his nose itched from all the dust and he almost tried to raise a hand to take care of it before he felt the rope around his arms and neck. He was tied to a wooden post and he could see the shapeshifter, not Dean, Dean would never do this, walk around him, like a lion circling a prey. He took a few more steps and backhanded Sam, which wasn't surprising but damn, did it sting._

_"Where is he?" He asked when his head stopped ringing, "Where’s Dean?"_

_The thing looked at him, a smile creeping on his lips, "I wouldn’t worry about him. I’d worry about you." Sam hated him already._

_"Where is he?"_

_"You don’t really wanna know," The shifter chuckled, "I swear, the more I learn about you and your family, I thought I came from a bad background."_

_Sam's head felt heavy, he was trying to get his hands to open and close so he wouldn't lose circulation, but the rope around his neck was making it hard to breathe correctly, he needed to buy time, Dean would find him. "What do you mean, learn?"_

_The shifter wasn't looking at him anymore, it was holding its head, Dean's head, Dean's face, and then it looked back with an even sharper smile, Sam's blood ran cold._

_"He’s sure got issues with you." The creature laughed and it should have sounded foreign in Dean's mouth, but Sam had heard this vicious tone of voice before, when Dean was twenty and Sam wanted so much more than he had, "You got to go to college." The shifter's eyes, Dean's eyes, were cutting deep,"He had to stay home. I mean, I had to stay home. With Dad. You don’t think I had dreams of my own?" Of course, he did, he had wanted Dean to go too, he'd wanted him to come so badly, he had, he did. "But Dad needed me. Where the hell were you?"_

_Sam's neck was sore, his heart too, "Where is my brother?"_

_The shifter leaned close and he might have looked like Dean but his scent was all wrong, more iron than leather, more blood than cinnamon,"I am your brother," No, he wasn't, he really wasn't. "See, deep down, I’m just jealous. You got friends. You could have a life. Me? I know I’m a freak. And sooner or later, everybody’s gonna leave me." But the words sounded true, the voice was right._

_"What are you talkin’ about?"_

_"You left." The thing said and it, he, sounded sad. "Hell, I did everything Dad asked me to, and he ditched me, too. No explanation, nothin’, just poof." The amulet moved with the creature, jumping on its, his, chest like it would on Dean's, "Left me with your sorry ass." When the shifter covered him with a sheet and left him there to rot, Sam had to stop himself from calling Dean's name._

"I'll kill you again," Dean growled, almost tearing the pages out of the book, "I'd kill you again, you fucking freak." How dare that thing lay this on his brother? Sure, back then he'd been a little envious of Sam's life, not like he wanted to go to college or anything, but just the peace of it had been tempting, but that had been his to disclose if he wanted to and he really, really hadn't wanted to. Sam hadn't needed to know this, not then, not ever. "Fucking shapeshifters, always putting your noses in people's business." He skipped two chapters, looking for the fight he knew his brother had gone through with the creature.

_Blood was pouring from his hair to his mouth, copper on his tongue, Sam woke up, "What are you gonna do to me?" The shifter had taken Dean's form again, maybe it knew that Rebecca wouldn't be quick enough if it came to a fight._

_"Oh, I’m not gonna do anything." It said, "Dean will, though."_

_"They’ll never catch him." God, Sam wanted to tear that cocky smile off this thing's face, off Dean's face._

_"Oh, doesn’t matter. Murder in the first of his own brother? He’ll be hunted the rest of his life." He picked up a knife and Sam could see the sharpness of the blade from his spot on the floor, it would cut into him like butter._

_"I must say, I will be sorry to lose this skin." It walked around the living room, Sam watched it stop in front of a few shelves, "Your brother’s got a lot of good qualities. You should appreciate him more than you do." It poured himself a drink, amber liquid sloshing in the crystal glass, "Cheers." He knocked it back, then grabbed a knife in the kitchen and stared at Sam with a smile before sticking it into the edge of the pool table._

_This was going to be his only chance, he gathered his legs up and then kicked the creature's knees as hard as he could, he sat up and moved his hands up and down the blade of the knife, not caring that it caught a part of his thumb too, the ropes fell, he jumped on his feet. The shapeshifter was already up and Sam took the knife, it wasn't silver but could do some damage. The shifter didn't even seem troubled, instead, it caught Sam's arm in mid-swing and knocked him down on his back, "Oh, you son of a bitch." It laughed, kicking and punching just like Dean would, shaking Sam off when he tried to pin the creature down, "Not bad, little brother."_

_Sam grunted, "You’re not him." He tried to kick the creature down, but it caught his leg and threw him back into the bookshelf, the entire thing collapsing on Sam's body, the edge of a book cutting a line in his eyebrow._

_"Even when we were kids," The thing taunted, and it sounded so much like Dean, too much like Dean, "I always kicked your ass." It grabbed a pool cue and Sam dodged, he tried to use his momentum to get the thing on its back but it pushed him back and before he could stop his fall, his back hit the coffee table, glass breaking and lodging itself deep in his shoulders. He felt Dean's hands, the same callous fingers he knew better than his own find their way towards his neck and for a brief moment he forgot, when the creature started tightening its grip, it was already too late._

Dean shot the thing dead, that's how it had ended then and it was how it ended there too, but Sam was barely conscious in the scene, his vision was blurry, blood was covering his eyes and hands and Dean's stomach launched when his brother's concussed mind shook with fear at the view of his brother's dead body, before he could recall it wasn't Dean at all. He closed the book with a sigh, it was dark outside, Lisa and Ben had already gone to bed and he'd been dumb enough to try to fit another book in his schedule before bed. He had truly thought that reading would have made him drowsy enough to quiet the voice in his mind that still counted the seconds, he had even believed that reading something under Sam's point of view would have left him somehow content, he should have known better. 

He needed to know what he was getting into before he got further into this, he needed a list, something that'd tell him what type of whacko bullshit was waiting for him in the books, and he wasn't talking about the monsters, Chuck was kind of shit at writing horror anyway and Dean had seen all of it for real, he was pretty certain he'd be fine with the ghosts and ghouls, but there must have been some sort of, _content warning,_ or some other shit that would warn him before he entered a book worth of self-hatred or in Sam's case, mind-numbing grief and pain. There had been forums when he and Sam had learned about this all gospel thing for the first time, there had been forums of people talking about them and rating the books, if Dean could find them again, he was sure some nerd with nothing better to do had marked down all of the angsty bullshit he had trouble dealing with right now and he could prepare himself for the rest of the journey.

He'd look into it tomorrow, he had to because he wasn't certain he could go through more of this. He had known back then that the shifter had knocked Sam around, but it was different to read all about it in gruesome details. Back then, Sam hadn't wanted to talk about it and Dean had been too focused on searching for dead and getting the hell out of St Louis to push. He wondered how many times Sam had kept things like this from him, how many times he'd swallowed back the accusations thrown at his face to carry on. The thought itself made Dean sick.

He forced himself to gobble down some water before he turned down the lights, leaving the books in the living room's darkness and slipping inside the bed he shared with Lisa. She was warm next to him, the sheets were soft and she smelled like peaches. The night was quiet, she was sweet and all of it, every piece of this life felt wrong. Dean's skin, his own, no one else's, itched. He didn't know why he couldn't scratch it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> slight trigger warning: mentions of suicide (dean thinking about it in a passing thought and talks of sam jumping in the cage regarded as suicide)

In the morning, the smell of candied peaches had disappeared, the sheets were sticky with sleep-induced sweat and Dean’s eyes opened on an empty bed in a bright room. The curtains were drawn back; the clock by the bedside table was clicking happily and Lisa’ side had been made, her two pillows were stacked neatly by Dean’s head. It wasn’t usual for him to be the last one asleep, his instincts would kick in around five and make his legs shaky with the need to get out and do something, but he was a man who had work at common and immutable hours now, he didn’t need to be up before the sun had come out and while he had never really taken the opportunity to leisure in the morning, he’d apparently been more tired than he’d thought last night. 

The shower was wonderful, Dean even groaned with pleasure, Lisa’s water pressure was a gift on God’s green Earth and the water would go so high in temperature that each time he let himself grow pink and a little burned from it, it had turned the entire bathroom into a hammam. It was so different from what he was used to, he could count on one hand the number of times he and Sam had found a motel room with a half-decent bathroom, which was a miserable number seeing as _all of their lives_ had been spent in motel rooms. The only time they’d gotten something worthwhile was that one Summer outside of Wichita, when their dad had left them for two months in a rent-by-month studio. The town had been awful, tiny and dusty with absolutely nothing to do except go on endless car rides and pick out different snacks at the local supermarket each night, but the studio had been awesome, even Sam, who had then already entered the pissy age of sixteen, had agreed.

The studio had only one bed, but it hadn’t mattered at all, they’d been living in each other’s pockets for over a decade, and the room wasn’t the main attraction, the main attraction had been the TV with the cable, the kitchen with an actual stove and the bathroom where the showerhead could come off the wall without busting all the pipes. Back then, Dean had thought these were the heights of luxury, he remembered watching a horror movie, one he hadn’t seen before and that wasn’t so old or so bad that he’d only put it on to fill the silence, with Sam sprawled on the ground by his feet, too tall now to share the sofa comfortably. They’d passed a bag of jalapeño flavored chips back and forth, Dean had even let his brother drink a beer, a full one not just steal sips, and when the movie had ended and Sam had dragged himself to their room, Dean had gotten into the shower and spent a good hour under the warm spray of water, letting his muscles get loose and his dick get hard. Those two months in Kansas where he’d spent all day in the Impala, listening to the same tapes again and again with Sam complaining by his side, their windows opened to let the breeze in before they’d go back to the studio and spent the evening together too, laughing at the same shows and then sleeping side by side, Sam already snoring when Dean joined him, satiated and pliable from his night shower, had been Dean’s best Summer. 

The next one had been awful, because Sam had moved from pissy to downright mean, his anger had been crushing and hot in a way that no Kansas weather could have competed with and Dean hadn’t been able to make him laugh anymore, he’d only gotten melancholic smiles that didn’t belong on the face of a seventeen-year-old for his efforts or sneers when his jokes fell too close to home and Sam’s only defence had been to attack. He hadn’t known then, that Sam had already planned to leave, that he’d been carrying college pamphlets in his bag, the same caramel leathered one he’d used for his computer until his last days on Earth, maybe if Dean had known, had asked a little more, they could have shared one last good Summer. But it had scared him, he’d been terrified really, of the way Sam’s eyes either burned too brightly or dulled to a dead grey and it had been easier then to go out and spend his evenings and nights with the girls of whatever town they’d been stuck in, one that wasn’t in the middle of nowhere in Wichita where no girls had been worth leaving the comfort of his rent-by-month studio, than face whatever Sam was going through. 

It was too late now, all of it was too late and all Dean had left were memories of warm evenings where his little brother had laughed, his cheeks pink from the heat and from the beer, that came back to hit him in the face like leaves in a cyclone, because Lisa Braeden’s water pressure reminded him of a studio’s bathroom in Bumfuck Wichita, his life was a joke told in motel room stains and blood-soaked clothes. He left the bathroom feeling worse for wear, his skin was tingling from being rubbed raw and even his softest henley felt coarse. He needed coffee and he needed it fast, maybe even tapped directly into his veins so he could stop feeling so fucking chapped, he entered the kitchen with a mission and then forgot it as soon as he saw Lisa.

She was sitting at the end of the table, her head in her hands and Dean couldn’t see if she had already gotten changed out of her nightgown because she was hidden behind the piles and piles of _Supernatural_ books he’d left last night in the living room. He hadn’t thought much of it then, he had told her a bit about it after they’d gotten the package and while she hadn’t looked all that thrilled; it hadn’t felt like something he had needed to hide for her peace of mind. He’d been honest, he’d told her the books were about him, about Sam, he even told her she was probably in a few of them too. He had asked her if it was okay because he needed to read them, he needed to know why someone had left them on her front porch, it was his job to find that shit out just as much as it was now his job to put tiles in kitchens and put windows in their hinges. She hadn’t said anything then, she’d only told him that it was fine and he hadn’t pushed because she’d been eyeing him up and down, something akin to worry in her eyes when she looked too closely at the glass of whiskey in his hand, but maybe he shouldn’t have listened, maybe he should have hidden this just like he hid the Impala in the garage. 

“Hey,” He was going for nonchalant because maybe if he kept this natural, he could get out of what seemed to be building like a fight, “Did you sleep well?”

She didn’t look up, she didn’t even acknowledge his presence in the room, “Where’s Ben?” He knew that Ben was at his friend Holly’s house, he’d been the one on the phone last night with Holly’s mom, making sure she’d pick Ben up at eight like planned for whatever weird suburb activity kids would go crazy for on a Saturday morning, but he was trying to provoke a reaction, good or bad, just something he could work with.

He moved to the coffee machine, getting a mug because if this was going where he thought it might, he would need at least something to keep him cognizant. She didn’t speak when he joined her, sitting at her left with his coffee in hand, but she looked up and her eyes were red. He put his mug on the table, balancing it between two piles of books before taking her hand in his, she didn’t flinch, she didn’t move, she just stared and somehow that was worse. 

When she spoke, her voice was gentle but not in a way that preceded a kiss, “Is all of it true?” She sounded bruised, like whatever she had read had sliced into her very core, it made Dean queasy. 

He swallowed back his revulsion, “Most of it, yeah. Chuck took a few liberties with the way he described us and he cut some stuff out of the books too, I think, but yeah.” He hadn’t made sure of that yet actually, maybe those versions of the gospel hadn’t been abridged and the thought of Lisa reading about Sam’s months with Ruby, the thought that she could know about the demon blood and what it had done to Sam made Dean even sicker. 

It had taken him some time, too much time in fact, to recognise that what Sam had gone through wasn’t just a stupid choice he’d made, that it had been an addiction, plain and simple, and that he had needed more than Dean had been willing to give back then. Looking back now, because all Dean did these days was look back, there had been signs, there had been red flags and literal calls for help that had gone unanswered because Dean had been too fucked up, he’d been Hellbound in too many ways and Sam, the way he’d been frantic and exposed like a live wire, had been more than he could handle. He hadn’t told Sam this, hadn’t said that he was sorry for how he’d left Sam go through it alone, from the rehab to the reintegration, he had meant to say it, to sit Sam down and tell him that the mistakes had come from both sides, that the guilt didn’t need to be shouldered alone, but then so much had happened and he had never found the time up until Sam’s last night on Earth and then all the words sounded false, like he was giving Sam pretend compassion. 

Lisa’s hand left his and she clutched a book on the table, Dean couldn’t see the title and the cover, a man with his head on his knees in a dark red room, wasn’t delivering any clean-cut answer of what it could be about. “Is this what you’ve been doing this whole week?” She asked, her brown eyes searching into his with an intensity that made Dean nervous, “Just torturing yourself?”

He blinked, “What?” He had absolutely not seen this coming, he’d been ready for confusion, anger, even maybe some repulsion or fear but he hadn’t expected pity. “What are you talking about?”

“All of these books,” She nodded towards the piles, “They’re parts of your life, right? Of your brother’s?” He nodded and she looked even sadder, “And you’ve been reading them, you went back to the very start right?”

“Lisa, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but whatever it is you’re worried about, I can explain.”

“I’m not worried,” Her garnet red nails scratched a book cover, she’d spun back towards anger, “I just don’t understand why you’re reading this, Dean, you’ve lived this, you know what happened.”

“I don’t know all of it, they're things about Sam-”

“There are things you shouldn’t know, Dean.” She was scowling, she never scowled even when she was so mad that it could have shaken the entire house. “There are things people take to the grave for a reason.”

A cold realisation settled in Dean’s gut, something glacial and corrosive that was slowly dissolving him from the inside out, if he hadn’t guessed this was about Sam before, now he was sure. For a second, he was so sad that he thought he’d die on the spot, he didn’t think this would happen again, that he’d feel this mind-boggling sort of pain again after Stull Cemetery, but there it was again, annihilating him where he stood. It hurt like nothing else, to have someone who’d barely even talked to Sam while he was alive look at Dean like he was desecrating his brother’s memory in some unforgivable way and then the pain, this excruciating ache in his heart turned to anger. 

It overtook him before he could try to fight it, he jumped up, his chair falling behind him and his mug spilling coffee over the table, “You know nothing about my brother.” The words felt like poison on his tongue, so acrid and nasty that it could have splintered the skin around his mouth, “You think you know him, Lisa? Because you read some scenes in one book? I _raised_ him, I was there all his life and if I want to read these shitty fucking books to cope, I can and I will.” He felt himself shake and he grabbed the edge of the table to stay upright, his fingers digging into the wood. “My brother is gone.” Saying it felt simultaneously like a betrayal and an act of devotion. “And this is all I have left of him.”

She didn’t say anything for a while and Dean didn’t know if this was a storm out kind of moment or if standing here, one fist on the table where spilt coffee slowly soaked his sleeve was the way to go, but he was tired, exhausted to the bone in a way that wasn’t natural, like his strength had been drained out of him. He felt a bit like he did when he got captured by that djinn and for one blissful minute, one he counted down to the last seconds, he thought he was stuck in a dream, one where the djinn got it all wrong, where he gave him the bleakest future possible in hope that Dean would truly believe it was his life and not fight it. In that minute, if there’d been a knife in his hands he’d have buried it in his abdomen, just like he had last time. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” She finally whispered, her voice and words breaking something in Dean even further, “And I’m sorry because I don’t what it’s like, I don’t know how to help you.” She stood up too, she was still wearing her nightgown, know Dean knew. “I thought giving you time was the right thing to do. I thought that you’d get better and that’s why I let it go this far, that’s why I don’t say anything when you put bourbon in your coffee or when you drink an entire bottle of wine with dinner.” She was making her way to him, the coffee had started dripping on the floor, she was barefoot. “But this is too much.” 

When she placed a hand on his cheek, he thought it would burn, instead, he felt colder, “I know you’re trying, I know this is you trying, but this is not how to grieve your brother.” Her eyes were the wrong shade of hazel, “Dean, those books-”

“They’re my memories,” He said, looking back at her with faked confidence, “They’re just memories, Lisa, they’re fucked up and I know my life is weird, _was_ weird, but they’re just that, they’re memories of my life with Sam.”

She shook her head and he knew before she opened her mouth that this was the moment that would break or make them, “Dean, these books are your brother’s suicide letter.”

It was like getting shot, he could compare the two quite accurately too, he’d been shot enough to know that it felt like this, fast and shocking, almost painless when it happened and then so severe that you split in two, that your body echoed with it and your flesh rearranged itself around the bullet. He tried to get away from her, to get her perfectly soft and pristine hands off his face, but she held on and he hated her a little for that.

She tried to whisper something, to caress him with words of comfort that felt razor-sharp on the shell of his ear, she even tried to do that thing with the palm of her hand; that move she used on Ben too when he was nervous for a math test, she put her hand on Dean’s neck and let her thumb rub small circles on his skin. The movement was supposed to be relaxing but it was so out of place, Dean had never been used to soft touches given freely and too sweet perfumes that didn’t precede something that ended in a bed. His idea of comfort was a strong hand patting his back or his shoulder, it was the smell of the rain while he drove the Impala, it was the burn of a glass of whiskey at the back of his throat and it was his brother. Comfort was a necklace wrapped in paper journal, it was heavy eggnog and a stolen candy bar thrown at his head when he was hungover. 

Comfort had left a suicide note, said Lisa, and if it was true how could Dean go on with the thought that the last years he’d spent with his brother had apparently just been the causes to the lethal, Hell burned consequence.

“You have to let it go,” Lisa said, her thumb still on the side of his neck, if her nail had been a knife, she could have rammed it in his jugular, it would have been less painful. “It’s the only way to move on.”

She talked with the same tone people took when they wanted to tell you that they knew what they were talking about, that they’d suffered too and so they could share this burden with you. And that was such a damn lie because people, _regular_ people, they could lose their brothers and they could fall back on something, they could fall back on their parents, on their friends, on their jobs or even their fucking pets. They could all fall back on these things without the need to create an entirely new life for themselves. Lisa, Ben, the Cicero house and the 9 to 5 job, they were coping mechanisms that had been chosen for him by his brother a few hours before he gave himself up to the literal devil, and they were all good, far too good for him, but they were just that, coping.

How could you move on when you’ve never had anything else? How could you let any of it go when giving up your grief means giving up all of what you are?

Without Sam, he was not himself; it was _SamandDean_ , it was the Winchester _s_ , it was “ _You take care of your brother_ ”, it was years of watching him grow up and then letting him go, it was reunions and heartbreaks and tears and blood and laughter all wrapped into one boy. It was one name, _Sam_ , when he woke up, _Sammy_ , when he went to sleep.

It was codependent, it was unhealthy, it was waking up drunk because you couldn’t stay conscious without him by your side but it was also knowing you were never alone, even when there was no one else in the room. It was more than anyone could ever feel, more than any other loss and Dean didn’t care how conceited that sounded, it was his truth. It was all he knew.

“I can’t.” He said, taking in her face and her eyes, perfect but not in the way that he could understand, and what he meant to say was that he _wouldn't, he won't_.

The books were the first things he packed, the rest he just threw in the Impala, not really caring where it fell. He left a letter for Ben and it was selfish and mean, Lisa told him so. Still, she kissed him when he closed the trunk, he kissed back and didn’t even feel hurt when she told him to not come back. She deserved better and she knew it, she’d always been smarter than he was. He hoped he wouldn't leave too much pain in his wake and that if he did, she would get better soon and be happy with someone who could look at her and see a future.

When the mile marker told him he was out of Illinois, he didn’t look back and when he stopped for the night, he turned off his phone and put on the Impala’s light, alone in the orange light, he felt warm. He opened a book, one where Sam flirted with a preacher girl, and it didn’t feel like home, but it didn’t feel wrong. When Dean fell asleep that night, for the first time in eight months, nine weeks, three days and nineteen hours since the fall, he dreamt of his brother.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for: talks of death, dean's depression and some blood, all those good supernatural things.
> 
> \- dnw

The first week back on the road passed in a blur of driving and moping, not that he’d admit it to anyone else, Jimmy Page’s guitar was reverberating in the Impala’s almost suffocating heat and it kept Dean awake even when his eyelids were so heavy with sleep that he thought they would drop right off his face. He only stopped when he was out of gas or needed to listen to his basic needs, and even then he tried to push back as much as he could. He didn’t eat or drink much, gone was his insatiable need for red meat and booze, he would force too weak coffee and granola bars down his throat when he felt like his body couldn’t go on for much longer but he felt no joy in it, he was surviving because he had made a promise, nothing less, nothing more.

He didn’t stop in any motels, he couldn’t, the thought of lying down in a too big bed or sitting in a room where another one, cold and unused, would stare back at him made him want to gouge his eyes out. His days were spent sleeping in his car, buying food and gas at stations, taking the occasional shower when he found a highway bathroom (but he stopped shaving, it was useless now) and reading. He read every time he stopped driving, he went through an entire book in one day, sometimes two, sometimes three, and Robert Plant sang in the background each time he turned a page, losing himself a little bit more in the paper picture of his little brother. He found out on a long night that if put on the first Zeppelin album when he started reading, Sam’s thoughts could echo beautifully with the second track, _Babe I’m Gonna Leave You_ seemed written for him.

Dean made the connections through a few throwaway comments, things that he hadn’t thought too much about back then because he didn’t have the time, they were always moving, always learning to be with each other and he couldn’t just drop it all and try to figure out what Sam was thinking. But now he could and he could read between the lines, it was an angry “ _You know, truth is, when we finally do find Dad, I don’t know if he’s even gonna wanna see me_ .” and Plant would sing about leaving in the summertime, Dean could almost see the shape of Sam’s seventeen-year-old tense shoulders when he took his bag and slammed the door. It was a scared, terrified and lonely even though Dean was right here, “ _What’s happening to me?_ ” and the music would stop, a pause before the crescendo. It was a vicious and true _“I have a mind of my own. I’m not pathetic, like you.”_ and the guitar would tear through the drums, like a scream.

It was a smirk, painful because he wondered if Dean would see beyond it, if he would tell him to drop his act and go back in the car when he replied _“That’s what I want you to do!”_ and it was running away, the same hard line of his shoulders, from seventeen to twenty-two, the same commitment to doing what felt right even when Dean was right next to him saying no, no Sam, this isn’t what we do, this isn’t what dad wants, the same enraged courage that Dean had always been jealous of. And Robert Plant would sing, he’d say _I know, I know, I know, I never never never never never gonna leave your babe. But I got to go away from this place_ and Dean would turn the pages with shaky hands, reading and breaking. Maybe Lisa had a point, this was as much torture as it was comfort, maybe even a little more pain than pleasure if he was being honest.

But it was all he had, because when he tried to remember how soft Sam’s hair had been, how he’d used to run his fingers through it when they were kids and their dad would drive late at night, the same song turned low so Sammy could get a few hours of sleep, he couldn’t recall it. He’d try to remember the way Sam would say his name, say it and not scream it, because he could remember perfectly how Sam said _Dean_ when he was crying, when he was in pain, when he was saying goodbye, but he couldn’t hear the simple way Sammy used to say his name when he was happy in his mind anymore, all his memories were tainted, sadness smudged on them and Dean couldn’t wipe it away.

Robert Plant stopped singing, the start of _You Shook Me_ made Dean close his book and turn off the light. Sleeping didn’t help the restlessness, it didn’t bring any sort of relief, instead, it made waking up a little harder every day, it made the days feel longer and Dean hated the fact that he _knew_ that it was just a trick of his grief-stricken brain because the seconds were the same. But each day felt longer, heavier, like Dean was swimming through sticky syrup minutes and by the end of the first week he knew that he needed something more in his routine or he’d put a bullet through his brain on the last day of the month. 

He found a hunt in the next town he stopped at, between the beef jerky and the cigarettes he’d started buying again, because apparently going back to your terrible teenage habits were another way of coping with the abrupt end of the apocalypse and the disappearance of your last remaining family member, he fit the local papers and he found it while he was munching pieces of the over-salted meat with a cup of diluted gas station coffee.

Five girls in five months, all around fifteen, all brunettes, all torn apart by coyotes or so the authorities said. Each one had found in the woods a few days after the full moon and Dean knew they wouldn’t say it in the news but they were missing their hearts, he was sure of it and that meant only one thing. There was a werewolf out of Dyersville, one that enjoyed picking his prey, one that was consciously killing pre-teen girls, young daughters and _sisters_. There was a monster in Iowa and by the end of the week, Dean was going to make sure it wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

* * *

Hunting felt good, it settled something in Dean, something that had felt absent for a while now, he’d gotten that feeling back in Cicero back on his constructions sites, he’d feel tired at the end of the day, exhausted to the point where he would groan when asked to take out the trash or cook dinner but he wasn’t satisfied. Dean was a physical person, always had been and it wasn’t just related to sex, even if it was one of his favorite ways to get physical, he liked feeling a little sore in the morning after a long day of work, he liked wiping sweat away from his forehead and making his hands a little more callused, he liked feeling like he’d used up all of his energy in one day. One of the guys on a job he worked back in November had told him that he was probably an adrenaline junkie or something, that he could go bungee-jumping or some shit to scratch the itch but he had known even then that it had nothing to with that, he wasn’t a suburb guy who needed action, he was just out of his element.

As much as he sometimes hated it, and hated the fact that he felt destined for it, hunting was part of Dean. There was something familiar in researching the signs, in tracking a creature and cleaning your gun while engineering a plan, it felt natural, like breathing but it didn’t make him feel _good_ about himself. There was something to say about the fact that he only felt whole in his car with a weapon in his hand and his brother by his side and that now that one part of his perfect constitution was missing, _would forever be missing_ , he fell back on the best next thing. 

He had been a bit like this when his father had died too, he remembered how the thrill of the hunt had made him forget for one minute the guilt that had taken place in his bones, the violence had been soothing in the worst way possible and Sam had been so scared, Sam had been so fucking terrified to lose him and Dean had tried to stop, to leave behind the bloodthirst and the self-destruction because Sam had asked, Sammy needed him and that had been enough, that had been all the reason he ever needed. 

Sam wasn’t here now.

And Dean had tried, he’d given his best fucking shot with Lisa and Ben, but it wasn’t enough, it would never be enough because the hunt was in him, it was all he had left that he could really recall was his; his car was dad’s, his books were a stranger’s, his gun was dad’s first, his name belong to Heaven and Hell but the hunt was his and his alone now. Talk about balance.

Finding his way through the streets of Dyersville almost came naturally, Dean moved through the city, following the trail of fluorescent _MISSING_ posters that clashed on the beige and brick color palette of the town with determination. This case made his blood boil, werewolves had become a tricky business since that girl back in San Francisco, the one Sam had spent the night with and then had shot straight through the heart, but this one wouldn’t put a strain on his conscience. This wasn’t the work of someone unaware of the darkness inside, this was a cognizant, cold-blooded choice and there were no other options for monsters like these, Dean wouldn’t even feel bad about it, _hell_ , he might even enjoy it. 

He made his way to a small and wacky coffee shop, the type with psychedelic mural paintings that were a mess of pink and green circles melting into one another and made your eyes sting if you looked at it for too long. They didn’t have tables and chairs, instead the room was cluttered with huge piles of books, tall enough that you could put your cup on them and still be able to pick it up, and mismatched velvet armchairs that just looked like they would swallow you whole if given the chance. This was a trendy place in every way that Dean loathed, all the people working here had nose rings, the menu was so long that he got lost in it and it made no sense, what even was the point of a lactose-free latte? These types of places made Dean uneasy and he didn’t want to think too closely about the fact that Sam would have loved the free WiFi and the alt-rock playing in the background, it wouldn’t help alleviate his agitation in any fucking way to think about Sam right now. 

In any other circumstances, he would have been out of this place before he could say “ _salt_ ”, but he was meeting here with the mother of Daniela Santiago, the third victim. He’d called her under the pretence of writing an article on her daughter’s passing, he even promised her that whatever he would publish would be gut-wrenching enough for the local animal associations to stop the protests against coyote hunting. He recognised her the moment he passed the doors of the café, she didn’t fit with this whole’s place schtick, she was a petite woman in her mid-forties, with pitch-black hair and dark circles around her brown eyes. She looked tired and sullen, which Dean guessed wasn’t so strange seeing as she had buried her only daughter just three months ago. 

“Mrs Santiago?” She looked surprised to see him, as if he would have just bailed on her at the last minute and Dean grew angry at the thought that she’d been in this position before, that someone had promised to listen to her talk about her daughter and then never showed up. God, people were fucked up. “We talked on the phone.”

“Oh, yes, you’re the journalist,” She shook his hand with a frown, her hand felt warm and thin in his, “You’re a lot younger than I thought you’d be.”

“You’re too kind,” He flashed her his best smile, the one that made women stop asking questions and made men doubt everything they knew about themselves, and took place with her at one of the strange velvet booths near the windows. They ordered something to drink and Mrs Santiago didn’t need him to get his notepad out before she started talking about the night of her daughter’s disappearance. Truth be told, Dean was probably younger than the average redactor in chief, she wasn’t wrong about that, but he’d turned thirty-one last month and that wasn’t exactly young in his book.

_Sam would never turn thirty, Sam would never turn thirty, Sammy would never ever turn thirty, he would be twenty-seven for whole of eternity._

He crushed his empty paper cup of too sugary coffee in his hand, his heart was pounding quickly in his chest, he felt like it was going to burst his entire rib cage open. Mrs Santiago wasn’t looking at him, too engrossed in the retelling of the day they found her daughter’s body to see how Dean was crumbling in front of her, maybe Dyersville was the town of small mercies.

He left the building a few minutes later, after thanking the woman profusely for her time and paying an obscene amount of money for two cappuccinos. He had a lead, an actual one, Daniela had been taken after her soccer practice and her body had been found near the field. Someone on that team was a monster and right now all his money was on coach Cassidy, who had apparently been so very kind with all the grieving mothers, who had driven them around town while they were organising their daughters’ funerals, all of which had been members of his pathetic soccer team. Dean was going to skin that beast alive.

He put one silver knife in each of his boots and made sure that his Colt was loaded with the right kind of bullets before making his way to the soccer field. He didn’t drive there, he loved the Impala more than he loved some actual people but she was not the most discreet car around, he needed to fade in the environment if he didn’t want to grow suspicious. The soccer field was far from the rest of the city, it was isolated, cut from civilisation and surrounded by miles of dense forest. The perfect spot for a werewolf to take its victims, hunt them in the woods just to cultivate its appetite before striking fast and hard, leaving them no chance to make it back home to their families alive.

Dean arrived there when the soccer team was still practising, he watched from a corner as young girls ran around, passing a ball between them and trying to score a goal. They were so young, so fucking young and happy and naive, it made him sick. He got even sicker when he remembered that year when Sam had gotten into a high school soccer team. 

He’d been barely thirteen and they’d been camped in a town for longer than usual, John Winchester had been kept away for longer than what had been strictly necessary and now Dean knew that he’d probably been back at the Milligans, getting to know his other son while the other two had been left to rot somewhere in Wisconsin. Back then they hadn’t known this and they had only thought that the hunt was more difficult than planned, that they needed to be patient and wait for their dad to come back, which of course had meant that Sam had gotten restless two weeks in and Dean didn’t have the time to take care of him, he’d been too busy getting a fake ID to get a job and pay for far too many boxes of Krafts dinners to hold his baby brother’s hand while he ran around town and played with sticks, or whatever the fuck thirteen-years-old geeks did in their free time. The whole thing had been born out of a throwaway comment, because Dean wouldn’t be able to deal with one more day of whining and _Jesus Christ, Sam, can’t you go throw a ball outside or something!_ And Sam, always the smartass, had listened and done it.

He’d been good at it too, that small fucker, he was fast and reckless, never afraid to throw himself on the ground when he played goalie or try to kick the ankles of his opponents when he played the field. Dean had watched him a few times, he had even taken a few afternoons off when Sam had told him, all proud and pink with effort, that they were through to the local championship. Two hours after Sam’s big win, their dad had shown up and Sam hadn’t even gotten the chance to call the few friends he’d made on the team to say he wouldn’t be at the pizzeria for their celebratory dinner before they were out of Wisconsin, the Impala lifting dust in their hurry to skip the city as quickly as possible. For years, Dean had wondered what their father had done with Sam’s gold sprayed plastic trophy, he’d even almost asked for the thing back a few times because it wasn’t fair that dad had gotten it just because he’d come back at the right time while Dean had made Sam practice snacks for an entire month. By the time he’d gotten the courage to ask, Sam had given him his mathlete medal and he hadn’t felt the need to get the trophy too. It would have taken too much space in his duffel bag after all.

The memory made Dean both giddy and nauseous, he’d been so certain these past few weeks that all his happy memories of Sam had been gone that getting one back was like winning the lottery, but it gave a bitter taste to this entire case, which he hadn’t thought was possible, how could the murder of teenage girls get even more bitter? The answer was always; just add some Winchester brand of bitter.

Practice ended while he’d been lost in memory land, he could see the girls get their bags out of the big metal lockers that could fit an entire human being in them if you tried real hard. Some parents’ cars were already parked near the field’s exit, obviously the deaths had taken its toll on the town and now people turned to overprotection, not that Dean would judge, if he’d gotten wind that something like this was happening while Sam was kicking a ball around he would have probably slept in front of the school doors and followed the kid around until the sun came up. Still, this didn’t make his work easier, he might have been considered dead by most authorities but if twenty literal soccer moms saw him shoot their precious coach Cassidy, he would be back on the FBI’s most wanted. He needed to wait even if his instincts were screaming at him to finish the man right here and there, there was something murderous building in Dean the longer he stayed here, watching the thirty-something blond man give gentle smiles to the girls he was responsible for, girls who _trusted_ him to keep them safe, to take care of them.

_You take care of your brother, Dean, you hear me? You keep him safe, you keep him good and if changes, Dean, if your brother changes you know what you have to do. You take care of him, you take care of your brother, you hear me?_

Jesus fucking Christ, he was losing it. Dean might have not been the healthiest son of a bitch to start with but even he could recognise the fact that he was getting hysterical, this hunt was hitting too close to home, even though he had no home to hit and he shouldn’t have been able to make some sort of link between dead teenage girls and Sam to begin with, he was falling slowly but surely in a state of brutal delirium that was going to bruise and burn anyone that stood in his wake. He needed to get out of this town as quickly as he could, needed to crash on Bobby’s couch and close his eyes for one second without feeling like the backseat of the Impala was haunted, he needed to rest for a few days or this would be his last hunt, he knew it.

But first, he needed to take care of the coach.

He left his corner when he saw the man exit the field, he wasn’t alone, he had a kid with him, a young girl with short brown hair, she looked lanky, as if she’d grown too quickly for the rest of her body to fuse with her now longer bones. A new wave of nausea hit Dean deep and he gritted his teeth, feeling his jaw snap shut as he followed the man and the kid in the woods, that poor kid-

_Lanky brown-haired kid, too tall, too skinny, running in the woods with only one knife in his hand because dad had said he couldn’t keep a gun yet, his knees are scrapped to hell, he’s not even fifteen yet and Dean is trying to find him, screaming his name, no care in the world who or what hears because Sam is alone, Sam is getting chased and he’s gonna die, god he’s gonna die, Sammy is gonna die and Dean hadn’t meant to leave him, he’d just blinked, just closed his eyes for one second, SammySammySammySammySammySammySam._

She didn’t know yet that she has been chosen by a fucking sociopath to appease his aberrant cravings and Dean won’t let it get this far, he’ll save that kid, he’ll send her back to her parents and she’ll never have to know, she’ll never have to cry herself to sleep because monsters are real, monsters are real-

_“You gotta be careful of what’s in the dark, Sammy, okay?” Hazel eyes staring back, filled with tears he won’t let fall because he’s just a kid, but he’s such a brave kid and it kills Dean, it cracks him open and makes him dizzy with pain. He wanted to protect him for a little longer, just a little longer, so he could stay a kid for a few more years, just a few more years. “There are things in the dark, Sam, and if you can’t see them it doesn’t mean they can’t see you.”_

The smell of decaying leaves and dirt filled Dean’s nose, he’d started running without realising it because there was a monster in those woods and a kid was in danger, his gun was heavy in his hand and if he stopped running now, he’d puke and cry his guts out. Someone screamed to his right, his feet picked up the speed, he didn’t care about a plan now, he wasn’t sure he’d ever had one to begin with, but this would end here and now.

The kid was on the ground, blood was on her neck, pooling around her head as she heaved, leaves stuck to her face. She was dying and she was changing at the same time, if she didn’t get eaten, she’d be the one hunting next, what a fucked up circle of life. The werewolf was above her, he’d torn through his shirt but he was still wearing his shorts and club jacket, the red and blue vinyl catching the moonlight.

“Hey!” Dean aimed his gun for the heart but he only grazed the shoulder before the beast launched at him, howling so loud that Dean thought he’d go deaf with it. He reached for one of his knives, ignoring the pain on his right arm that either meant one bone was broken or that something was dislocated. The werewolf, that fucking coach, didn’t let him swipe at him, he knocked him back down, Dean’s head bashed on the dirt floor, something wet dripped on his forehead, either werewolf’s drool, blood or rain, it didn’t matter it was just wet. He wasn’t going to get out of here alive, he couldn’t feel his hands, he couldn’t reach for any of his weapons and the creature’s breath was on his face. He could pick up the kid’s strenuous gasps of breath, shit, what a hero he made, what a fucking waste.

_“You got to promise me something.” Yes, of course, anything, anything you want, anything Sammy, I’ll do anything. “You got to promise me not to try to bring me back.” Was that love? Was that family? Was it mercy or cruelty, either way, no, no, Sam, anything but that, stop asking me for things I can never give. I’ll take your place, I’ll die and die again but I won’t, I won’t stand and watch you disappear._

A hot flash of pain between his ribs, an aborted scream, blood gushing out and soaking the earth.

_Sam jumping, Sam falling, a grave that Dean could never dig and he had tried, he’d broken his nails on the dirt and the rocks, he would have split his fingers, would have crushed his bones if it meant to get him out, to protect him, just for a little longer. Sammy, be a kid for a little longer._

“Dean, it’s gonna be okay, I got you.” Hands on his face, someone lifting him up, the smell of coffee and soap and it wasn't possible because at the very end, Dean’s brother smelled of sulfur. 

_“Do you remember when we were kids?” Words whispered in the dark, from one bed to another because they can’t fall asleep, tomorrow Sam won’t be Sam anymore. Dean wished he was brave enough to get up and join his brother, share the same bed, the same air one last time. “You used to sing me to sleep.” It was as far as asking as Sam was ever gonna get._

He woke up in a room he hadn’t rented, with bandages he hadn’t put on his own body and his car keys on the bedside table. He wasn’t in the woods anymore and he was alive, he was breathing.

He screamed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as you can see the chapter number is 30 now, it's what i planned out in my story template but it might grow bigger or smaller depending on how i divide certain parts. there is also a biiiiig chance that this story becomes the first part of a series because i started this thinking "oh, i won't delve too much in plot, this is wincest!whump" but i was a fool and now i have an actual plot for this (which is basically a rewrite of season 6 and early season 7) so... yeah, i am an invested idiot.

The room was disgustingly familiar, not that Dean had ever actually been in this shitty Dyersville motel before, but it was what he’d usually go for, a two queens bedroom with a TV and a mini-fridge filled with water bottles, salted peanuts and cocktail sausages. It’s what he would have picked for himself, the room was on the ground floor, near the exit and close to the parking, where he could see the Impala, and the many vending machines that once upon a time he’d have kicked open for a midnight snack. It was perfect and exactly what Dean would have rented except for the fact that he had never seen this place before and that he had in no shape or form tried to get a motel room in this town before settling on a hunt. Someone had picked this place for him, had picked the most perfect room in the history of shitty motel rooms and then had taken Dean there, while he’d been out of it and bleeding, it made no fucking sense. 

The same person must have been the one to patched him up, he could feel the pull of some back alley stitches on his stomach, between his lower ribs where the werewolf had gotten its claws deep in him. His shoulder was bandaged close to his chest, he could feel the soreness in his entire arm that said it had been dislocated just a few hours ago, but someone had set it back and then made sure that Dean wouldn’t sprain it further while he slept. He was clean too, there was no blood or dirt clogging his pores and he could smell his own hair, sweet and fragrant with motel shampoo. Someone or _something_ had saved Dean from getting butchered back in the woods, then they had taken him back to his car, driven him there and rented a room before cleaning his body and fixing his wounds. 

“Fucking hell,” He lifted himself up with one hand, heavy but alive as he hauled himself out of bed and towards the bathroom. The carpet under his feet was a dark red color, burgundy Sam’s voice in his mind supplied, and it didn’t feel as dirty on his skin as he’d expected from a motel floor. The bathroom was small but practical, the bath doubled as a shower and the mirror over the sink lit up when you turned on the lights. Dean watched himself, he took in his wax-like complexion, pale and clammy-smooth, as well as the blood pink gauze coverings his chest. It wasn’t a smart idea to go poking around a literal flesh wound but he was curious and he still had trouble believing all of this was real, that he hadn’t somehow died and gone to cheap motel heaven while he’d bled out in that forest. He lifted the gauze up, hissing when the tape keeping it secured on his skin ripped out a few hairs, and took a look at what he’d expect to be a raw mass of skin and flesh, instead he found a flawless line of stitches. They were straight and neat, expertly made by someone who hadn’t trembled while sewing Dean up together, all eleven of them seemed symmetrical and precise, Dean didn’t think this would even leave a scar. 

Not only did someone drive him here, paid for a motel room, gave him a sponge bath and then took care of his wounds but they did it surgically well, as if they knew their way around werewolf inflicted lacerations and homespun sutures. Whoever had saved him was a hunter, or something aware of the supernatural and of the hunting traditions of not going to the hospital even for injuries that left unattended would give you septicemia or _death_ , it made Dean’s blood boil. He hadn’t asked for help, far from it, there was a reason why he’d been hunting alone and that was nobody’s fucking business, he didn’t need pity or worse, charity, he would have been just fine dying in his own terms in those woods. Everyone had to die one day or another and Dean hadn’t been going for a suicidal werewolf hunt but if that was how he was going to end, he didn’t need some douchebag hunter rescuing him in the nick of time and then housing him in a cruddy motel room. The room wasn’t cruddy, sure, but that wasn’t the point he was trying to make here. He found his clothes in the bathroom, they’d been folded nicely into a perfect square and then put on the heater, it took Dean a few seconds to understand that they had been washed and dried too. Someone had played housewife while he’d been unconscious, he was almost surprised that there wasn’t a three-course meal waiting for him on the table.

He dressed quickly and was pretty proud of himself for not groaning in pain when he fastened his belt around his waist and, by extension, his stitched-up wound, then he splashed some cold water on his face and sat down on the edge of the bathtub, letting himself rest his legs while he tried to think. 

He needed to find out what had happened here, if he went to the motel’s reception, he could probably get some information and maybe even an identification on who the fuck had cleaned his clothes and put a bottle of blue Gatorade and two advills on his bedside table. Then he needed to make sure that the murderous werewolf/pitiful coach had actually been taken care of, which reminded him of the poor girl, the one he’d been supposed to save and instead had left to choke in her own blood. The memory of her agonising heaves made Dean retch and he was lucky to still be in the bathroom when he felt last night’s fancy hipster coffee and his gas station triangle-cut sandwich come up his throat. 

He left the bathroom after, feeling weak and queasy but determined too, and swallowed the two pills that had been left out for him before putting on his boots and leaving the room. He didn’t have the keys but he didn’t need them to grill the receptionist, he only needed a smirk and a wink.

“Hi there,” The woman at the counter was a little older than he was, she had strawberry blonde curls that fell on her shoulders and bounced when she moved her head, on any other day of the week, and any other year than this one, Dean would have taken her back to his room in a flash. She was on the shorter side and her curves were plump and soft, she blushed prettily when he leaned on the desk and looked up to her, he knew just how to bat his lashes and smile to make his eyes shine and his lips look pinker. 

“I’m working for a sale company passing through this town and I got in really late last night with someone.” She swallowed audibly when his fingers moved on the wooden surface, making their way to the pen and notepad sitting there. “The person I was with probably took care of the bill for the room but I’d have paid for my share if I hadn’t been so drunk last night, it’s not my style to let people settle my debt, if you know what I mean?”

The receptionist nodded, “Ye-yes, of course.”

“So I wondered, could you maybe describe to me who paid for the room?” He bit on his bottom lip, making it fuller when he puffed a breath, “I was so out of it I don’t really remember who I was with but I’m sure hearing about them will trigger my memory.”

She frowned a bit, and he guessed the angle of _God, I was so wasted last night I don’t remember who fucked me six ways through Sunday_ did raise a few questions of morality but he couldn’t have gone for a “Oh my colleague paid for our double room, could you pretty please give me his credit card information” argument when a hunter had most than likely been involved, the card would be fraudulent and he’d be back to knowing nothing.

“I wasn’t the one working last night but I’ve seen a man come out of room 36 half an hour ago.” Her words made Dean stop for a second. If what she said was true, and she had no reasons to lie, it meant that Dean had shared a room with a stranger for an entire night, that someone had been there while he slept, watching him.

The other bed in the room hadn’t been unmade, he’d noticed it before leaving, as if the other person in the room hadn’t slept or even sat on it, which made sense when the theory was this special someone had only dropped Dean off, took care of his wounds and then left town, but if they, _he_ , spent the entire night there, Dean wondered how he hadn't crashed down as well, especially if he’d finished off the hunt. No normal man would spend twelve hours awake after fighting a werewolf. 

“Do you remember what he looked like?” Gosh, that made him look like a particularly questionable one-night stand, he could only imagine what she’d read off this situation.

“He was tall,” She answered quickly and without any doubts, Dean guessed tall was probably a nice way of saying gigantic. “Brown hair, a little long and he was Caucasian. It’s all I could see really, he left in a black car and he was too far away for me to see his face.”

“It’s fine, thank you, you’ve already done a lot.” He gave her a smile, a gentle and genuine one this time. 

He left the motel hall, letting the doors slam shut behind him as he made his way towards the Impala. His Baby, his precious car, god, if that damn weirdo had done anything to his car Dean was going to hunt his ass from this state to the next. But the car was there, parked perfectly straight within the lines, with just enough room between the passenger door and the lamppost for someone to exit the car comfortably, which was something Dean didn’t care too much about, Sam used to complain plenty about it. Dean unlocked his door and climbed inside the car, he searched around for another clue; he didn’t expect a handwritten note with an address but people left signs behind them, always, even the most trained of hunters would leave behind a ticket, a bill, something crumpled and small that’d fall off their coat pockets while they were in a hurry. Dean studied every inch of his car, he crouched to swipe a hand under the seats, he dug into the mess he’d started leaving on the backseat, but he couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary, just his own crinkled protein bar wraps and crushed coffee cups.

He felt tension built again in his body and when he breathed out, he felt the ache in his wound spread, like a disease brought on by alarm. He needed answers, needed it like starving lungs needed oxygen, he wouldn’t be able to sleep, to think, if he didn’t find out what had happened here, what had been done to him. Because there was no way someone had just decided to save him out of the goodness of their heart, nice things didn’t happen to the Winchesters, least of all Dean, least of all now. 

He left the motel, he wanted more than anything to put this town in his rearview mirror but as far as he knew, the job wasn’t done, he couldn’t call this case closed before he saw the body of that fucking coach. He took the road towards the woods, passing the coffee shop he’d stopped at yesterday and the soccer field. He parked the car at the opening of the forest, there were a few signs that warned against the usual wild predators and gave superficial advices about hiking. Dean never understood the point of it, that and camping, never understood why people would leave the comfort of their own homes to go build fires and sleep in dirt. John Winchester hadn’t been a fan either but he’d taught both his sons how to start fires when you didn’t have a lighter and what you could eat when stranded in the woods, he’d also taught Dean a frightening amount of way to skin mammals. He’d tried to teach Sam too, when the kid was around thirteen, but Sam had looked him straight in the eyes and said that if they weren’t going to actually eat the rabbit and that this was just basic training, he’d learn on the job, he pointblank refused to entertain the idea, dad had been red with rage.

Dean hadn’t understood it back then, sure, it wasn’t pleasant to kill animals, he hadn’t been able to pull the trigger on that deer back at Bobby’s place, but if their hot-blooded, ex-marine father told you to snap the neck of the rabbit and scrape the fur, you did it; because if you didn’t, you were going to run behind the Impala all the way back to the motel and then you were going to run lapses at 5am for your trouble. Sam had known this, it was all he knew really, Dean had blurry memories of a father that smiled more than he frowned and of gentle kisses on the crown of his head, Sam only knew the bark of orders and the heated cramps you gained by saying _No, sir._ But Sam had been fearless too, always, from his first breath to his last, Sammy had never done what was asked of him if he believed it was crap, he wouldn’t kill a rabbit and he wouldn’t forgo the world, even when the world had let him down, Sammy had said _No, sir_ one last time and he’d took the devil with him. Dean had always envied his boldness even when he hated it too, now he only looked back on it with bittersweet affection.

The woods were easier to travel during the day, Dean tracked his own footprints from last night easily, he’d left a mess behind, broken branches and the distinct contour of his boots in the soft soil, but when he arrived at the clearing where he had fought the werewolf, his tracks ended. Actually, all tracks ended, there were no prints, no traces of the fight, least of all the creature, the girl or Dean himself, as if someone had taken the time to erase what had happened last night. Dean moved closer to a tree on his right, where he remembered clearly getting shoved against so hard that he felt the bark bore in the flesh of his back, and looked around for something, blood, skin, anything. He even tried to smell the tree like a lunatic, but he only noticed the fresh scent of chlorophyll. 

He was starting to panic now, his bubbling anger had grown into full-blown terror, this made no logical sense. If he hadn’t woken up with stitches, he’d have believed fully that last night’s hunt had been a dream brewed up by his sleep-deprived and mourning mind, but the stitches were real, the pain in his flank was the one thing solid he could lean on, that and the receptionist’s testimony. Someone had been there, someone had taken care of Dean, had parked the Impala perfectly, had gone back here to wipe down the scene and dispose of the body. 

Bodie _s_.

The girl, she’d been here too, she’d gotten bit, torn apart and bleeding, her throat open and flowing. Where was she now? Dean wasn’t naïve enough to believe that whoever had done this, had expunged this forest of evidence with clinical accuracy, had left her alive, he wanted to, wanted to stop looking because he knew that this would destroy the last tether of empathy he held, but he needed to know this too. He wondered how different his life would have been if he’d grown up in the same sweet ignorance as the rest of the world, he used to think knowing was a blessing, that it protected him, that it protected _Sam_ , he’d been wrong.

He walked further into the forest, he walked on instinct now, he couldn’t find any hard proof but he could track this down like he did with a hunt. He wandered in the denser part of the woods, where the trees covered the sky entirely and even the daylight dimmed; this is where he’d go, if he needed to hide something. Soon enough, he smelled it, the familiar odor of flesh and bones, torched and salted, with the faint scent of liquid fuel. He followed it, his heart beating harder and harder and he found it, the large plot of earth that had been scooped out and then smoothed back. A grave big enough for two.

The walk back to the Impala felt longer, the smell of burned off skin, monster and human, clung to Dean and before he could stop it, he emptied his stomach on the tarmac. Unshed tears clutched to his lashes and his tongue tasted sour in his own mouth. This hadn’t helped, not at all, he was as clueless as he’d been in the morning, except now he had the one confirmation that counted: a girl had died last night and Dean hadn’t been able to stop it. Seemed like he wasn’t able to stop death lately, he was always too late, wherever it came from and whoever it took, he could only watch.

He didn’t try to deny it to himself when he started crying this time, there was no reason to, he didn’t cry for the poor girl in the woods, he hadn’t even known her name. He cried for his brother, he sobbed and choked on it.

“Sammy,” A too-young kid, in a grave big enough for two, “Sammy, Sammy, _SammySamSammySamSammy_ -”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cut this chapter in two because it was getting a bit long (and i felt like dean needed to take a breather, i swear i love dean im sorry for mistreating him so badly) but i hope it was still a good one!  
> comments are DEEPLY appreciated, it's super motivating for me to read your reactions so please please, leave as maaany as your heart desires.
> 
> -dnw


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! sorry this chapter took eight days to finish but it's a long one (and probably the one i hate the most but we don't talk about that) here are the trigger warnings for this particular chapter: canon typical violence (talks of hunts, dead people, werewolves, etc), dean's usual brand of suicidal thoughts, a panic attack, some swearing (bobby's here!! yay!!) and mentions of john winchester making questionable parenting choices... enjoy!

Dean left Dyersville in the evening, after he had calmed down enough to stop shaking and puking, and after he’d made sure that he had enough gas to hop out of this state without looking back. He drove out of town and started thinking after two hours of mind-numbing Metallica (and breaking all the speeding limits of Iowa). Truth be told, he didn’t have many options, calling Bobby seemed like the only viable one, not that he _wanted_ to, he hadn’t exactly made the best choices recently when it came to his friend, surrogate father, mentor, _whatever_ , he’d made all the worst ones really, but he was short on trustworthy friends and he still felt uncomfortable at the idea of calling Castiel.

Dean wasn’t sure why, but the thought of the angel looming, his blue eyes boring into the back of his skull made him nervous. Castiel was his friend, hell, he was probably Dean’s last friend alive that wasn’t some sort of family by proxy, but the power he sent out in waves made Dean’s crawl, this celestial energy didn’t feel natural, no human should be touched by something so powerful, it felt wrong, or too right really, something too pure and clean. It left Dean raw, exposed in the worst possible way. Lucifer’s touch had been like that too, worse really, Dean guessed it was because he was an Archangel, his power was unstoppable in a way that Castiel’s wasn’t. If Castiel was electricity, Lucifer had been lightning, except he hadn’t been as ephemeral as a bolt, he’d been colossal and potent. Dean had felt the ringing of his force in his bones for weeks after the beat down he’d gotten in Stull Cemetery, as if it had slithered inside him with each swing of Sam’s fist, never _Lucifer’s_ , not even then, to his face. Just thinking about it made Dean squirm on his seat, he felt a shiver run down his spine and freeze him in his spot. No, he wouldn’t pray to Castiel, not if it wasn’t a dire emergency. Bobby it was, then.

He decided to park his car in a dirt field on the road to Rochester, there was a dive bar not too far away, he could see the flickering neon lights that promised ice cold Buds and the first few clients arriving, the usual beer drinking and beard wearing bikers that Dean had learned how to scam out of a few hundreds before he’d even turned sixteen. This was familiar, in the same sick way that the motel room had been, Dean had always felt homesick without the roughness of thin and cheap sheets under his fingertips or the stickiness of malt covered floors, it had been one of his downfalls in Cicero, the fact that home could never compute in his brain as something that wasn’t on the move. 

He took his phone out of the gloves box where he’d thrown it a month ago, he’d been smart enough to turn it off before forgetting it there, which meant he wouldn’t have to sit on a rocklike stool for an hour and pay for a milk-warm beer while he stole some of the bar’s electricity to charge it. However, because stupidity was never far away when Dean was involved in making choices, it also meant that he had no excuses, he couldn’t put the call off, more than he already had because he knew that as soon as he turned his phone back on, he’d be welcomed by at least a couple hundred missed calls. He hadn’t told Bobby that he’d left Lisa, he’d thought about it a few thousand times while driving around, but he hadn’t found the courage, he’d used all of it to keep reading the books, to keep turning the pages of a story he already knew the end of. 

This was bound to hurt, or to make them both so angry that they’d tear each other’s faces off by interposed hissing calls. Strangely, grief hadn’t brought them closer, which probably made since Dean had made sure that no one and nothing could truly touch him since Sam’s disappearance, but it left him jaded in a way he’d never felt before. Bobby had always been easy to understand, easy to talk to, even in his worst moments, even when he hid things from them and inflicted sharp words laced by whiskey breath. Bobby had never been mean with intent, he’d never mocked Dean (or Sam’s, always Sam’s when John was concerned) ideas or choices, he’d never raised a hand on them either (always Dean, because he would never let that happen while he was breathing, when John was concerned), and even when he was angry, even when he pushed them away in resentful sorrow, Dean could look at Bobby and see what made him tick. It had always been like that between them, from the moment their dad had left both he and Sam had the older man’s house for that one long Summer back in 87 and Dean had laid it out on him. He could remember that conversation pretty well, even decades later, it was hard to forget really, because it had felt like some sort of unspoken oath.

Sam had been barely four; a pink-cheeked, chubby kid with dark curls and twinkling hazel eyes who still smelled soft, that pure scent of baby powder and soap that Dean had for years after connected to home. Their dad had left them on Bobby’s doorsteps, he’d only exchanged a few words with the other hunter before ruffling Dean’s hair and telling him to take care of his brother one last time before driving off, the Impala shining under the June sun like an obsidian. Dean hadn’t been scared, if dad thought the man was safe than he just was, no questions asked, but he had still recoiled when Bobby had first tried to lift Sam up in his arms, because Sammy could walk, he didn’t need to be carried and Dean hadn’t wanted to unclasp his brother’s tubby fist from around his fingers. Bobby hadn’t pressed, he’d opened the door instead and lead them inside to the kitchen, offering apple slices like a peace offering, which Dean had only accepted because Sam liked fresh foods and didn’t get them often. Soon after, he had felt the need to make everything clear, because he trusted their dad, of course, but Sammy was _his_ responsibility.

“I don’t trust you with Sammy,” He’d said, munching on the tough skin of a green apple, “It ain’t against you, I just can’t leave him with you alone before I know you’re not a weirdo.”

Bobby hadn’t said anything for a while, he’d just stared at them, probably taking in the strange view of them both, these children who already moved around each other like they were linked physically by a thread, a chain, something that would pull and strain but never break, not truly. When he had finally answered, Dean had found his smile curiously honest, he wasn’t used to it, adults, his dad really, were rarely genuine with him.

“That’s alright with me, kid.”

It made Dean hollow to think about this now, to reminisce about those Summer days where Bobby’s house and the salvage had spread around them and breathed something new, something almost magical. He had spent hours lying in excavated cars with Sam sprawled flat on his chest, he’d spent the whole day reading for his brother, one hand turning the pages of a book about knights and kings while the other twirled Sam’s hair gently. When Sam was gone, when he’d left for Stanford and everything in Dean’s life had felt empty and void of meaning, this had been the memories he’d gone back to, just to feel something that didn’t make him want to scream.

Now those Summer days brought nothing else than pain and regrets, because maybe, just maybe, if Dean hadn’t filled his brother’s head with tales of quests and sacrifices, he wouldn’t be alone now, on the side of a road near Rochester, with the hard plastic of his phone digging in his hand while it pinged with worried messages and angry calls of a man who’d earned the title of father back in 1987. 

The tone only rang once, but the silence stretched out, “Bobby?” No words, but the sound of someone breathing. “Bobby, are you there?”

“I thought you were dead,” The words didn’t shock Dean, it was Bobby’s tone that froze him to the bone, the astonished pain in his voice. Guilt seeped into Dean’s every pore, he felt it churn in his stomach and made him sickly.

“Bobby, I’m sorry,” He started, his voice a little rough, he could still taste bile on the back of his throat from his meltdown on the parking lot, “I left Cicero and I didn’t know-”

“Yeah, I know you left Cicero, _boy_ , what do you think I did after you stopped returning my calls?” Bobby’s accent was always more transparent when he was angry, “I drove there! Had to knock on your lady’s damn front door to know if you were still kicking and she told me you bailed on her after she read one of those damn books.”

A spark of amusement stirred in Dean’s chest at the thought of Lisa and Bobby meeting, they would have probably got on like a house on fire, they were both too smart for their own good and liked to bust Dean’s balls any time he’s acting like a fool. But there’s also a slight panic next to that amusement, the fact that Bobby actually drove to Illinois said a lot about the state Dean has put him through these past few months. 

“Bobby-” 

“You leave your home, turn down your phone,” There was fury in the older man’s voice, something Dean hadn’t heard much coming from his surrogate father. “Do you have any idea what kind of horror I imagined? Do you even _care_?”

And that hurt, that really put the final nail in the coffin of culpability and disgrace Dean had built for himself these past few months, because he always thought, perhaps foolishly, that this wasn’t something he ever had to say out loud to Bobby, that they understood each other without the need for Dean to acknowledge the concern, the trust or the love he felt. Because of course, he loved Bobby, of _fucking_ course, he cared but he’d never gotten the opportunity to learn how to say these things in his entire life and now he felt incomplete, devoid of meaning.

When he was a kid, around six years old, he’d press kisses to the crown of Sam’s head, where his curls smelled the most like baby skin and lavender shampoo, and say I love you. He used to sing the Beatles to lull his brother to sleep and when Sammy finally closed his eyes, he would whisper it again and again, because he had so much love in his body, so much tragedy in his veins, it had to get out in one way and John wouldn’t have taken the words with the same innocent and unaware joy that Sam did. All of his _I love yous_ , all the ones he used to give his mother and father, they had to go somewhere and so they went to Sam, because that made sense, because it was the truth and nothing but the truth. 

Somewhere down the line, maybe around the time he was sixteen and Sam was twelve, the words got forgotten. Like an old folklore tale that you would pass down from generations to generations but would get lost in translations, diluted and reduced so much that you wouldn’t recognise it yourself if it was sung back to you. 

When Sam was a toddler, he’d say it back each time Dean whispered it to him, he’d smile that toothless grin and place wet, sloppy kisses on Dean’s freckled cheek with happy _I love you too, De!_ And then Sammy grew up, he stopped smiling, stopped laughing, he stopped shortening Dean’s name and the looks he gave his older brother were no longer shiny with boundless admiration; they were dull and sad acceptance. No sweet sixteen, no boyish candor, Sammy grew up and didn’t stop.

The only time Dean ever heard the words, past 1992, was on the night Sam left for Stanford and back then, because he was so angry, so betrayed, so lost and so sad, Dean hadn’t savored them. Sam had looked at him, his hazel eyes hidden slightly behind his too long hair but tears glistening down his cheek and he’d said _“We can go together, you can come with me. Dean, please, I love you.”_ and Dean had taken these words as a last cruelty, as Sam’s last teenage barbarity when really, it’d been another truth, one Dean hadn’t been ready to accept, something he couldn’t even entertain because John was in the motel room, pacing and drinking, while Sam waited under the rain, his duffel bag in the dirt near him, his face reflecting the moonlight while he waited for an answer. 

Now, when all was done but nothing was said, Dean could look back on it and see what it had stood for, he could comprehend that this had been Sam’s last effort to save them both and it hurt to think about it, it hurt so fucking badly that every single emotion Dean had ever felt in his life all came with a warning, one that always mentioned Sam. He should have been able to interact with other human beings without Sam, he should have been able to speak and communicate with the people he cared about now that his brother was gone without feeling like he was a poorly drawn caricature of a man and yet, here he was.

He took a shaky breath, “Bobby, I care.” The words felt heavy on his tongue, chunky when he let them fall past his lips, “I couldn’t stay with Lisa, she didn’t get it and I didn’t really expect her to but I can’t let it go, you know that. I can’t just bottle it up, I thought it could, I tried, but it was killing me.”

“Leaving I get, you don’t need to explain that to me.” A sigh on the other side of the line, “But, you should have called.”

“I know and I thought about it from the moment I left Illinois, but I couldn’t, I just couldn't.”

“ _Why_? Why didn’t you just-”

“I thought you’d be disappointed.” It came out of Dean like a punch, quick and fervent, he hadn’t put it into words until now, but this was what it had been since the start, fear. “I was scared to let you down,” A flash of clarity, “I was scared to let Sam down.”

He felt the start of a sob form in the back of his throat but he wouldn’t let it go; he was so tired of crying, he’d spent decades not letting a single tear out and now he was a mess of snot each time he thought about his brother, it was getting pathetic. 

“I promised Sam I would make this work, the apple pie life, it was the last thing he asked of me and I couldn’t even give him that, Bobby, I fucked it up.” He clenched his hand into a fist, “I fucked it all up.”

He wiped at his face, catching some tears before they could fall, he heard Bobby exhale loudly and it sounded both relieved and somber, such a strange disparity.

“ _Son_ ,” His heart ached a little at the word, “You didn’t fuck up and before you try to sell me more of that bullshit, you listen to me,” Dean’s back straightened on instinct at the authority in the older man’s voice, “You’re never gonna disappoint me, not with that. You think I’m gonna throw you out my damn house because you and your lady didn’t work out? That’s not what family is about.”

Dean chuckled lightly.

“And I know I can’t really speak for your brother, but if there’s one thing I’m sure about it’s that Sam just wanted you to be happy.” Bobby’s voice was thick with emotion, Dean guessed he hadn’t been dealing too well with it either. “That boy fought the devil for you, it might have been for the rest of the world a little too but it was mostly for you and you have to know that by now, Dean.”

“I do, I do, Bobby.”

“So you know Sam would want you to get better whatever it takes and if that means leaving Cicero, I’m sure your brother would get it.”

“But we don’t know that,” Dean whispered, “We’re never gonna be sure of that and it just, it’s just too much.”

It was stupid to say out loud, but this was what Dean couldn’t shake, this overwhelming feeling that he was betraying his brother one last time and that he could never make it right. 

“Come to Sioux Falls, son,” Bobby’s voice was gentle now, a low hum that softened the raw edge of Dean’s grief. “We’ll figure it, alright?”

He wanted to say yes, more than anything else he wanted to make Bobby happy, to agree and drive up to South Dakota. He wanted to let himself fall into one of Bobby’s rare but warm embrace and crash on his couch, he wanted to wrap himself in the safe oak and whiskey smell of Bobby’s house and just stop running for a moment, to just breathe in and rest. But the pull of his stitches reminded him why he couldn’t.

“I can’t right now,” He said, gritting his teeth through the words, “That’s why I called you actually.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Something happened, Bobby,” He looked outside, the sun was setting, he could pick up the muffled sound of music coming from the bar. He watched two men, arm in arm, pass the swinging wooden doors with a smile, and for the first time in weeks, Dean started talking.

* * *

Bobby’s plans all ended in the same way; drop whatever you’re doing and drive back to Sioux Falls, son, and fast. But Dean couldn’t, there was something out there, someone who had saved him, finished his botched hunt and then kept watch for an entire night. It wasn’t something Dean could just let go, especially not when he knew that the man had been a hunter, a damn good one, someone Dean should have been aware of. When the Apocalypse had started and no town in America was safe from Heaven’s program, Bobby, Ellen and Rufus had gathered their forces, calling around to warn the network and make sure that they knew what they were up against. Dean remembered, sitting next to Sam on Bobby’s front porch and hearing snippets of conversations. He also remembered Jo, also so ready to prove herself, asking if any of these so-called hunters could back them up in their battle against the Horsemen. Sam had stiffened at this and Dean should have asked, because sure, they both had trust issues when it came to new people entering the small circle they both considered safe, but Sam had always been the most open-minded of them, he’d trusted Ellen on sight, Jo and Ash too. But he hadn’t asked, he hadn’t pushed because it had been just a few days after Sam’s return from his short-lived hunting break and the tension between them had been so heavy, it had felt like any wrong word would have driven Sam to the brink. Still, back then, Ellen and Bobby had both been pretty clear, there weren’t many, if any, hunters out there who were both competent and trustworthy, which meant that whoever had saved Dean in Dyersville was either new to the game or off everybody’s radar. Both options were hard to believe. 

“We could regroup,” Bobby insisted, clearly done with Dean’s rebuttal, “What do you think you’re gonna do, all on your own in Bumfuck Iowa with a hole in your gut?”

Dean sighed, “If I go right now I’m gonna lose his trail.”

“Oh, because now there’s a trail? It’s just getting better and better.”

“It’s a hunter, of course there’s a trail.”

“How do you track a hunter, boy?” Bobby snorted, Dean could hear him swallow, probably bourbon.

Dean felt a smirk split his face, a little bitter, he’d learned this from his father actually. “When you wanna track a hunter, you track the hunt. He left half an hour before me, so he won’t be far and I’m sure you can find some monstery bullshit in the news on the side of the country. That’s where he’ll be.”

“You’re just going to run headfirst into a new hunt after being a werewolf chew toy?” Said like that, it didn’t sound like Dean’s best plan, but it wasn’t his worst either, far from it. “And if you do find him, your mysterious savior, what the fuck you gonna tell him? Thank you for putting my intestines back in my abdomen, you wanna spilt a beer?”

“I just need to know who it was Bobby.” There was something there that Dean couldn’t put his finger on, a feeling he’d gotten when he woke up in that room, the familiarity of it all that he couldn’t shake, the smell of soap and coffee.

“You know what they say about gifts and horses.”

“That they shouldn’t be left under the Christmas tree unsupervised?”

“Funny, that’s what I’ll say for your eulogy, that you were a funny, reckless motherfucker.”

“Don’t forget to mention my dashing good looks.” 

Bobby laughed, gruff and fond, it warmed Dean from the tip of his toes to the crown of his head to hear it again. 

“Fine, you win. Give me an hour and I’ll find you the closest hunt, but you better call me when you get there and you call me when you get out or I swear to whatever there is above our heads that I’ll shoot you myself, Winchester.”

“You’re the best, Bobby.”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up now, go take a nap or something, you’re gonna need it.”

Dean hung up, he smiled as he threw his phone next to him, it was the first time in a while it felt genuine. He felt a little more human now, talking had done him some good but he could still feel the outlines of his own being, sharpened by pain. Bobby had dulled the blade that tore through Dean just a little bit but it wouldn’t last long, he breathed easier, yes, but he knew that in the silence of the Impala, it would return with a vengeance, better to welcome it with something to get its teeth into. He reached for his duffle in the backseat and fumbled with the zipper before withdrawing what he’d been looking for. 

This book’s cover was a little less ridiculous than its counterparts, there were no big and burly soap opera stars showing their naked and clean-shaven chests which Dean found moderately disappointing, he always enjoyed trying to guess which one was supposed to be him, instead there was just a black and white drawing of parking lot. The title, written in scarlet red, puzzled him, he could always pretty much predict which of his and Sam’s hunt he was going to read about by the title alone, but this one threw him in a loop. Maybe this one would be fun, he had a few good ones with Sam on that first year back on the road, not many, there was always the stress of searching for dad, but Dean could remember a few, almost, enjoyable ones. Like that damn Tulpa in Texas with those dumbass wannabe ghostbusters, the good times. Hope rekindled, Dean started reading.

* * *

_The floor was sticky, the peanuts on the table were stale and the beer was lukewarm, it was the perfect recipe for what Sam would consider a hellish night, but Dean was happy, he’d already gotten two phone numbers and the dart game had kept him busy during most of their habitual pre-hunt review._

_“So, local police have now ruled out foul play.” Sam said, scrolling down the few articles he’d gathered earlier that day. “Apparently, there are worse signs of a struggle.”_

_Dean was next to him, still focused on the dartboard, “Well, they could be right, it could just be a kidnapping. Maybe this isn’t our kind of gig.”_

_“Yeah, maybe not. Except for this, dad marked the area, Dean.” His brother came closer to the table, looking at the journal above Sam’s shoulder. “Possible hunting grounds of a phantom attacker.”_

_Dean frowned, “Why would he even do that?”_

_“Well, he found a lot of local folklore about a dark figure that comes out at night.” Sam pointed at a part of the journal, underlined in their father’s messy handwriting, “Grabs people, then vanishes. He found this too, this county has more missing persons per capita than anywhere else in the state.”_

_“That is weird.”_

_“Yeah.”_

This entire opening was rather vague, Dean could name at least ten hunts at the top of his head that had started this way; going over their meagre leads in a seedy bar and trying to find more when morning came. He idly scratched at the scruff on his chin, still a little confused. 

_“Don’t phantom attackers usually snatch people from their beds? Jenkins was taken from a parking lot.” Dean said, taking a swing of his beer._

_“Well, there are all kinds. You know, Spring Heeled Jacks, phantom gassers. They take people anywhere, anytime.” Sam sighed, he was exhausted, he’d barely slept since their last case. The memory of Max, of the bruises on his body, of the surge of power he’d felt when he’d seen his brother dead in his mind. He just wanted to sleep on this. “Look, Dean, I don’t know if this is our kind of gig either.”_

_“Yeah, you’re right, we should ask around more tomorrow.”_

_“Right.” Sam took out his wallet, standing up, “I saw a motel about five miles back.”_

_Dean threw his hands in the air, “Whoa, whoa, easy, let’s have another round.”_

_“We should get an early start.”_

_Dean shook his head with a laugh, “Yeah, you really know how to have fun, don’t you, Grandma?” Sam smiled back, “Alright, I’ll meet you outside, I gotta take a leak.”_

_He took his leather jacket and Sam grabbed his things off the table, stuffing them into his computer bag and walking out the bar. The night was quite warm, not enough to forgo a jacket but it was pleasant. Sam made his way towards the car, the Impala was almost invisible in the dark but Sam was pretty much programmed to find this damn car in any weather, any light or any county. The Impala was written into his DNA as much as Dean was, figures._

“Damn right, you know you love my Baby.” Dean smiled wide, turning the page. He knew that this was one of Sam’s most kept secret, his little brother loved the Impala just as much as Dean did. It was their childhood home, after all. 

_He stopped in his tracks when he heard a rattling sound, he looked around before taking out a flashlight from his coat pocket and placing his father’s journal on the hood of the car. He bent forward, his pulse quickening._

_“Whoa!” A cat, a damn cat. Gosh, he was lucky Dean hadn’t been there or he would have never heard the end of it. He chuckled to himself and stood back up, wiping his hands on his jeans. He turned around to pick up the book, a small smile still on his lips, when he felt something tug at his left foot. He tried to look down but before he could move a muscle, someone grabbed him from the back, a hand clasped on his mouth and nose and an arm wrapped around his windpipe. The only thought on his mind when he fell in the darkness was his brother’s name._

Dean’s finger spasmed around the soft corner of the book, it had taken him time, too much time really, but he could place this hunt now. He remembered it well, he still had nightmares about it now, dark and gritty dreams of gunshots ringing in his ears and the blood, the warm red blood of his brother on his hands. _The Benders_ , what a bizarre and enigmatic title for what Dean would have simply called some of the worst days of his life. He almost stopped reading, there was a lot he could deal with and he knew accurately well that worst things were yet to come, reasonably, this hunt was nothing in the grand scheme of what he and Sam had gone through. But it had been the very first time where he’d really believed, for those few endless minutes where he’d panted on his chair, burned and angry, that he’d lost Sam. He checked his watch, he had approximately thirty minutes to spare before Bobby called again, he had nothing else to do and his curiosity was as strong as his doubt. He started the next chapter. 

_Sam woke up to the smell of manure and blood. He took a breath, the air was iron heavy and muggy, it choked him instantly. He blinked, his eyes adapted to the dark quickly, he was in what looked like a barn. His back and knees ached, he lifted himself up, recognising the cold and hard surface under him to be metal, he looked around, now noticing where he was sitting._

_He was surrounded by bars, locked in a large cattle pen, the door in front of him seemed old and rusty but automatic, probably connected to an external electricity generator. It befuddled him for a moment, he’d never heard of phantom attackers who used man-made traps. This seemed like a well-oiled machine too, Sam wasn’t any sort of tourist, he was a trained hunter and yet, that thing had gotten him and thrown him there, in its trophy room. A very sedentary trophy room, which made even less sense. Sure, phantom travellers haunted a particular place, they were linked to the location of their sudden and violent death, but this didn’t fit their usual pattern, maybe he’d been wrong, maybe this was something else._

_He heard a groan on his left and he jumped at the sound, there was a form, moving and breathing on the other side of the room, it took Sam a ridiculous amount of time to understand it was human._

_“You’re alive!” He called, rushing to the bars, “Hey, you okay?”_

_Another groan, “Does it look like I’m doin’ okay?”_

_Sam could barely see the other, but he sounded male, older, probably in his forties. “Where are we?”_

_“I don’t know.” Some shuffling, the man approached closer, Sam could see his face in the faint light of the stars now. “The country, I think. Smells like the country.”_

_“You’re Alvin Jenkins, aren’t you?”_

_The man nodded, “Yeah.”_

_“I was looking for you.”_

_“Oh yeah?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_A snort, mean and pointed, “Well, no offense, but this is a piss-poor rescue.”_

_Sam frowned, “Well, my brother’s out there right now, too. He’s looking for us, so-”_

_“So, he’s not gonna find us. We’re in the middle of nowhere, waiting for them to come back and do God-knows-what to us.”_

_That prickled Sam’s interest, “What are they? Have you seen them?”_

_Jenkins scowled at him, “What are you talking about?”_

_“Whatever’s got us, what’d they look like?” Sam’s money was on werewolves now, some sort of sadistic, bloodthirsty, adrenaline-addicted werewolf looking for a fight before it ate them alive. The last time he’d hunted a werewolf, he’d been thirteen and Dean had ripped it to shreds after Sam had gotten lost in the woods. Their dad had wanted him to play bait, to take a walk near the creature’s den, Sam was only supposed to hike there and parade a bit, letting the beast get drunk on his candied, youthful smell (because of course, werewolves had a sweet tooth for the honey-smooth skin of prepubescent children, fucking disgusting) but he’d gotten lost. It had been too dark in the woods, all the trees looked the same and after a while, he’d ran, because he had heard the heavy, drum-like sound of the werewolf’s footsteps. He’d cried for his brother, screamed himself raw so Dean could run to him. It had worked, he’d gotten out of it alive, but his left leg had never felt quite the same and John had agreed that from now on Sam could keep a gun on him as well as a knife. It wasn’t a particularly good memory, just thinking about it made the joint in his left knee ache, but it reminded him of something important, something crucial. Dean always came to save him. Always._

_Jenkins moved back into the pen, his back arched as if ready to bolt, “See for yourself!”_

_The door of the building opened, two men wearing black coats and hats walked in. One of them walked to Jenkins and kicked the side of his pen door, the other man went to a panel of buttons attached to a pole in the middle of the room. He inserted a key into it and twisted. Jenkins’s door unlocked and the man entered, ignoring Jenkins’ screams and leaving a plate of food in front of him before quickly exiting the pen and the building._

_“I’ll be damned,” Sam said, still staring at the now-closed doors, “They’re just people.”_

_“Yeah,” Jenkins had his mouth full, the wet sounds of his mastication made Sam uneasy. “What’d you expect?”_

_“How often do they feed you?”_

_“Once a day, and they used that thing over there to open the cage.” He pointed at the panel._

_“And that’s the only time you see them?”_

_“So far, but I’m waitin’.”_

_“Waiting for what?”_

_“Ned Beatty time, man.”_

_Sam frowned again, this dude wasn’t making this easy for either of them. “I think it’s the least of your worries right now.”_

_“Oh yeah?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“What do you think they want, then?” He said it on the same tone Sam had heard all his life, the annoyed “if you think you’re so clever” voice his dad (and sometimes even Dean) were so fond of._

_He reached through the top of the pen and grabbed a long metal wire stretching from the top of the pole to the ground, he tried to pull it down._

_“Depends on who they are.”_

_Jenkins snickered, dark and bitter, “They’re a bunch of psycho hillbilly rednecks, if you ask me. Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.”_

_Sam kept pulling at the wire, detaching it little by little, it lasted a while, his grunts of effort and Jenkins’ chewing were the only sounds in the room. Then Jenkins spoke again, sounding far too self-assured for a man sitting in his own pee._

Dean shouldn’t have, but he chuckled. This was all fucked up, this entire hunt had been fucked up and he didn’t like what he was reading, but he found Sam’s annoyance towards Jenkins almost amusing. He knew it was wrong, the dude died, but god was he an irritating brat. 

It also left him a little agitated, this whole thing, he didn’t know what he was supposed to feel, reading about Sam’s childhood memory of the werewolf hunt that had terrorized Dean for most of his adult life, and that had paralyzed him in fear only a night ago. Sam hadn’t seemed too disturbed by it and it was such a strange thing what they would both focus on when it came to their childhood. Dean knew all about his brother’s nightmares, the memories of a specific wraith had plagued the normal non-psychic ones for years, Dean himself hadn’t thought too much about it, but Sam had blamed himself for that 1999 Missouri hunt until his last breath. Dean had only gotten slightly concussed, he puked once or twice and said some dumb shit, it got nothing over the bone-deep wound Sam had sported on his leg after that werewolf. And yet, Sam had never forgiven himself for it, even though it wasn’t his fault, even though he’d done everything their father had ordered and then some, this was Sam’s childhood guilt, the one thing that had kept him awake for months after. Luckily for him, it had only been one hunt, Dean’s dreams were tormented by twenty, take some leave some.

_“What’s your name, again?”_

_“It’s Sam,” He huffed._

_“Why don’t you give it up, Sammy, there’s no way out.”_

_Something flared in Sam’s chest, a nasty kind of hurt, infected by fear and worry, only one person could call him that and Sam didn’t know if he would ever see him again. “Don’t,” He pulled harder, the muscles in his arms straining, “Call me,” Something cracked above him, he pulled again, “Sammy!”_

_He groaned and finally tore the coil down, a small piece of metal fell on the floor, right next to his feet._

_“What is it?” Jenkins had his face pressed to the bars, his nose lodged between two of them._

_Sam picked the piece up, observing it as he turned it on all its sides. “It’s a bracket.”_

_“Well thank God, a bracket! Now we’ve got ‘em, huh?” Jenkins mocked, Sam fought the urge to throw it at his head. Suddenly, Jenkin’s pen door opened wide, they both flinched at the metal sound but where Sam saw a trap, Jenkins saw something else._

_“Must have been a short.” He said, “Maybe you knocked somethin’ loose.”_

_He climbed out, he was covered in mud, Sam could see how short he was now that he was standing._

_“I think you should get back in there, Jenkins.”_

_“What?”_

_“This isn’t right.”_

_It all felt wrong, it was too clean, to cut and dry, Sam wouldn’t trust it, couldn’t really, because he remembered what his dad had taught him, the hours of Marine training, the hours of sermons and warning, everything to breed distrusts for other human beings in the hearts of his sons. Sam had hated him for it, still did now, it had taken him years to be able to make friends without fearing that one of them would stab him in the back at the closest opportunity, but he was thankful for it now, he understood what his father meant when he said that it was them against the rest of the world._

_“Don’t you wanna get out of here?” Jenkins sounded angry, angry would get him killed._

_“Yeah, but that was too easy.”_

_Jenkins shook his head, annoyed, “Look, I’m gonna get out of here and I’m gonna send help,” He wouldn’t, one way or another, he wouldn’t. “Okay? Don’t worry.”_

_“No, I’m serious, Jenkins.” He used his dad’s voice, authoritarian and strict, leaving no place for discussion. “This might be a trap.”_

_The other man ignored him, “Bye, Sammy.” He pushed the doors of the building and left, Sam could hear the quick sound of his footsteps, too quick, too loud, like a rabbit on wet ground._

_“Jenkins!”_

_Sam grabbed at the bars of the pen, no, not a pen, his cage. He tried to scratch at the lock, tried to knock it loose with the bracket. He couldn’t hear Jenkins anymore, but he knew he was out there, he knew they were out there. He understood it now, what this was, the cattle cage should have led him on the right track, but he’d rejected the hypothesis on principle. Men didn’t do this, no men, no human would do this and yet here he was; the prey._

_For a moment, there was silence, bone-chilling silence, there were no birds chirping, no dogs howling at the moon, nothing. And then, a scream, something so distressed and weak that Sam blanched. He turned the bracket in his hands and when the gunshot rang, he closed his fingers around it._

_He kneeled in the cage, head bowed, his hair sticking to the back of his neck, and he prayed. At first only to God, his usual plea falling from his lips with ease but then, because he was only a man and while his faith was strong, he needed something solid, something he knew and trusted, he prayed to Dean._

_Dean would get here in time, he would, because his brother always got there in time, he was always there when Sam needed him most. In that forest, with the werewolf clawing him open, he’d been there. At his first soccer game, in the bleachers where all the moms shouted happily for their sons, he’d been there. At his prom, his birthdays, his worst nights and his best days, at the bus stop, leaving for California, he’d been there. And when Jess had burned, when all of Sam’s life had gone up in flames, Dean had been there to pull him out, to save him._

_He’d be here now, too, he’d come. Sam wasn’t sure of much in his life but he was sure of this, Dean wouldn’t leave him here, alone to die in a cage._

The page tore between Dean’s fingers, he shredded it, leaving no trace of its presence as he screamed. He threw the book behind him, on the backseat, and he fisted his hands in his hair, yanking it out and wailing harder. He wanted to cut his own heart out of his chest, wanted to crush it between his fingers, to pull the ventricles with his nails and bite into the soft flesh. He felt his breath quickening, his blood was beating loudly and he could taste it on his tongue, copper thick and foul. 

He didn’t know how long he stayed like this, his head between his knees, trembling, on the edge of vomiting but when his phone rang again, he neck throbbed with warm new aches. 

His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, “Bobby?” 

“Got two cases in the area,” Bobby replied without a hello, he didn’t seem to hear the quivers in Dean’s breath, fucking thankfully. “A salt and burn near Rock Creek, somebody’s already on it, some newcomer with a shiny truck that Rufus’ not too fond of, might be your guy.”

Dean swallowed around the weight on his throat, “What’s the other one?”

“Not sure, the police reports are kind of obscure, but from I’ve gathered? Probably a wraith of some sort.”

Something in Dean tautened, maybe the tendons around his heart, or something else, something that would hopefully give out soon. “Where is it?”

“In the north of Davenport, but son, the ghost in Rock Creek fits the pattern, Rufus said the guy on it seems like a nice kid, the type that would stitch up a stranger.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Rock Creek made sense, Rufus was rarely wrong, but Dean couldn’t shake it, soap and coffee, the perfect room, the perfectly parked car, with enough room for Sam’s gigantic legs to get out. Soap and coffee, the straight sutures, a tall man with brown hair, a little long, and a wraith, a wraith that would haunt Dean’s brother forever, even from the grave. “But I’m going to Davenport, can you text me the address?”

“Are you sure?” Reason versus instincts, Singer versus Winchester, you could never really fight your nature.

“I’ve never been more certain.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys, guys, we're close two big milestones for this fic: 1000 hits and a brother reunion!
> 
> comments are deeply appreciated, please leave as many as your heart desires <3
> 
> -dnw


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone, i'm gonna make a bit of a longer note today because i have a loooot to say, so please read it all before reading this chapter (or at least read the trigger warnings)
> 
> 1) i'm so so sorry this chapter took so much time! i keep saying that because my chapter are getting longer (10393 for this chapter alone) and i'm taking more time on them and editing them. i hope that isn't a disappointment to you, they might not all be as long as this one but i got caught up in the case mentioned in this chapter and i wanted to give it a satisfying resolution.
> 
> 2) and talking about satisfying resolution... supernatural is over! wow, 15 years! i haven't watched past season 10 (i decided to catch up because i stopped watching after season 9 and i missed those good boys) but i decided to watch the finale anyway because why not and hey! i cried! so there's that! i don't know if you guys are satisfied or not about it (or if you have watched it) but i wanna say that it's not gonna change the way i write sam and dean at all and it won't change any of the plot i have planned for this story and the following ones.
> 
> 3) aaaand talking about following stories (do you see how good my flow is), you might notice that motel bibles is now part of a series. i'm going to post more about this universe, firstly because motel bible will have a sequel (which is already planned out) and because i want to write some short stuff about the boys as teenagers. i have a fic in preperation that goes in depth about a hunt that is mentionned in this chapter where sam is 14 so if that interests you, feel free to subscribe to the series as well! i also have other sam/dean stories (which aren't related to this universe) and i'm gonna write A LOT because i think i really enjoy putting these boys in terribly angsty situations, so keep an eye out for that!
> 
> 4) i want to thank you all so much for you support on this fic. i know i reply to comments and tell you guys how much they mean to me but i'm just so thankful for your kind words and your excitement towards this work. it's the most satisfying reader-writer interactions i've ever had, so just thank you.
> 
> 5) here are the trigger warnings for this chapter: mentions of a car accident (brutal), description of decaying bodies, some gore and some death. some dean self-hatred. some religious themes. also shitty parents (for once, not the winchesters).
> 
> i think it's pretty much all i had to say, i'm gonna stop talking now. enjoy!
> 
> -dnw

There was something vile in Davenport, Iowa, something putrid and flayed open, oozing evil out into the world. It was the second thing Dean noticed in the town, the first being the lack of parking spots. 

It should have been illegal to build avenues with no room for cars bigger than a Prius. It was a nightmare, actually, it must have been one of the last circles of Hell, after anger but before heresy, there was parking your ‘67 Chevy between a pastel yellow Ford and a public bench, Dean was sure of it. He loved the Impala dearly, but even he had to recognise that she was not a packed street-friendly automobile. She was a lot more like a Rottweiler in a suburban area, exceptional but unnecessary.

The town, its fetid air and dreary atmosphere was the second thing he’d noticed, after groaning in frustration and letting his own head fall on his steering wheel. Dean could have blamed it on the weather, February in Iowa wasn’t a dream, but he knew better. He walked out of his car and looked around, everywhere his eyes fell, something was missing. Everything was colorless, even the people, it was as if someone had draped a thick grey fog over the landscape and drowned out everything that looked out of the ordinary. Everything exciting, strange or flashy had been erased out of existence, dimmed to the point of no return, it made Dean’s skin crawl and his stomach twist. 

He had seen this once before but it wasn’t usual, even in wraith related cases, when the spirit was powerful enough it had the ability to transform the world around itself, to mold it into a sort of shadow like reality where people didn’t feel much (if anything at all) and the wildlife withered and died but it was rare, rarer than pureblood werewolves. Dean had only witnessed something similar when he was seventeen; a tourist had gotten killed in Sedona, a stupid accident where he’d fallen off a ledge and broken his neck on impact. It had been no one’s fault, but the shock had been big enough for the guy’s spirit to stay behind, his business was unfinished and he’d been angry, so _fucking_ angry about his own passing that his ghost had changed rather quickly. The night before his transformation, everything had been the same, Sedona had been a mess of tiger orange earth, translucid water and light green trees, something out of an oil painting and then, the next morning, it had all been ashen and clouded. 

He remembered it well, waking up in the sleeping bag he shared with Sam, shivering with cold perspiration as the wind, metaphysical and abnormal, howled around them. Their Dad hadn’t been surprised at all, which Dean had found so cool back then, Sam hadn’t shared the sentiment, he rarely did. They’d found the man’s body a few hours after, the hike there hadn’t been pleasant but it was a secluded area, there were no civilians around, none one to put in danger except themselves. It’d been a done deal the minute they’d found the guy’s corpse, and _fuck_ , that hadn’t been a pretty sight, he’d only been dead for a couple of days, he was bloated, on the verge of decay and the smell, god, the smell had wormed its way into the fabric of their clothes, Dean had washed all of their shirts three times on five different settings in a shabby laundromat. At the same moment, Sam has taken a bus for Flagstaff.

Their father had doused the body in lighter fuel, Sam had cracked a match and Dean had kept watch, a shotgun in hand. They’d been a good team, competent and quick, but maybe it’d been naïve to expect Sam to want to keep this up for his entire life. Sure, back then he hadn’t minded it much, but he’d been _thirteen_ , you shouldn’t ask thirteen-years-old kids to make defining career choices, he knew that now. Still, Dean had always wondered if it was the view of the body, skin almost green and eyes liquid in the socket, that had finally made his brother flee. Flagstaff was a sensitive subject, even now, and Dean had never truly understood what had pushed his brother to take that step, what had been the breaking point. Maybe it had been the body, it would have made stronger men sick, but Dean doubted it. Sam’s feelings, his need to run away from the hunt, his need to settle and nest somewhere, it had always been more complicated than that and maybe Dean could never truly understand it. Sam’s idea of home was sedentary, someplace where you can choose the curtains and invite people over. Dean’s idea of home was Sam and wherever Sam would be, which probably meant that now Dean’s home was in Hell, what a cheerful idea.

The Sedona wraith hadn’t been the wraith case that had kept his brother awake with guilt for months, this one had come later, but it was the one that had marked Dean well enough to see the symptoms of a wraith gone rogue in just a few shrivelled plants.

He opened the trunk of his car, looking around in case someone was close enough to see the contents of it, and picked up a duffle. Sam had said, after one too many times they’d gotten their butts kicked by a vengeful spirit, that it was stupid of them to never have emergency ready packs for cases, they always lost so much time digging for silver bullets in the clutter of weapons they called a stash and Sam had started dividing all of their things into designed areas and bags. The far right of the trunk would work on anything susceptible to silver, werewolves, shifters and the occasional sirene. There was some mountain ash there too, some dried up herbs and powders Bobby swore by against nickel allergic freaks. The left side was for the knives and other machetes that just begged to caress a vampire’s neck. They used to keep deadman’s blood around before too, but one time it leaked and soaked the carpet and even Sam had agreed that it was just too nasty. In the middle were the firearms, all of them, the handguns, the riffles, the snipers and the sawn-offs, all shiny and clean because Dean might have been a wreck these past few weeks, but he wasn’t the type of idiot who let his babies get rusty. 

There were three bags in the trunk too, including the wraith duffle Dean had just taken, one of them was a demon pouch with three bottles of holy water, two sets of rosary beads, five bibles (all stolen from random motels and that Sam had taken the responsibility to annotate) and just enough space left in the bag for Ruby’s knife, but Dean didn’t like leaving it in the trunk. It was useful, remarkable and, mostly, it had become Sam’s knife, which meant Dean couldn’t just leave it behind like some regular three inches blade. He carried Sam’s Taurus around too, cleaned it frequently and kept it nearby, not in his belt like his Colt, but close enough that it didn’t feel like he abandoned it. Maybe this was weird, scratch that, he _knew_ it was weird, but between that and the books, he wasn’t certain which of his para-social relationships with objects was the unhealthiest. 

He’d been trying to keep his expectations in check, especially the deranged ones that seemed to conjure visions of his little brother, alive, well and hunting, but there’d been gurgling up since he’d seen Davenport’s mile marker. He couldn’t get over what had happened in Dyersville, there was something there, something unsaid and mysterious that churned unwanted feelings in his abdomen, some sort of metaphorical, emotional butter clogging his throat. It wasn’t just the scent of soap and coffee, if it’s just been that, it would have truly been insane and maybe Bobby ought to lock him up somewhere nice, with barred windows. But it was all the other things, the room, the stitches, the car, the arrangements around the hunting grounds. It screamed familiar; it screamed _you know me, you know this, Dean, see me._ It screamed _Sam_ , and maybe that was nuts, it probably was, but Dean just needed to be there, to see it with his own eyes. If he found the hunter and it was just some regular Joe, a good samaritan who’d just happened to save Dean in the nick of time by odd luck, he’d let it go. He’d go back to South Dakota, drink himself to oblivion with Bobby a few times and he’d leave the books there, burn them if he had to stop the temptation. He’d try to move on, actually move on, keep the family business and himself alive. But until then, he’d hold that torch, couldn’t let it go without a last proof. 

The wraith had been sighted by some kids near a church, the Grace Fellowship, which looked more like a bunker than a church if you asked Dean, but he probably wasn’t the targeted audience for scriptural architecture. Some ice was forming on the road, soft snow had fallen earlier in the week, he guessed, it must have been white and pristine on Monday, but now it was just grey sludge, sticking to the tires of the Impala and wetting the leather of Dean’s boots. There were a lot of people coming in and out of the church, which explained the tight parking spots, mostly seniors wearing big furry coats and hats, but he saw a few teenagers too, the type who wore khakis and buttoned up shirts to go with their well-coiffed hair. Dean was standing out like a sore thumb. 

He wasn’t going inside, there was no reason to, especially when he was carrying around a bag full of iron knives and ritual candles. But he wanted to, which was maybe stranger than anything else that had happened until then, something was drawing him in, not just his vain need to feel closer to his pious brother, something stronger, something magnetic in the occult sense of the word. 

“Ah shit,” He took a quick look around, more people were coming in, parking their car on the frosty sidewalk. This was a spellbinding desire, something driven by the spirit that haunted the grounds of the church. A wraith with faith, he’d finally seen it all.

Wraiths were pretty easy to kill, in general at least. Like most spirits, you could take care of them by purifying their remains, salt and burn, _easy and clean_. But sometimes, if you were incredibly unlucky and their remains had already been torched, you’d have to give them what they wanted, that was what had happened with that other wraith, Sam’s wraith. 

That wraith had haunted an abandoned sanatorium in Wisconsin, it had been pretty harmless because the building was isolated, except stupid teenagers had started to show up there in November 1997 and tried to see the ghost with their own eyes, acting all brave in front of their high school crushes like stupid teenagers do. Dean had never fallen into that category of idiocy, even when he’d been fifteen and girl crazy, he had stayed clear of potentially evil places. You didn’t mess with that shit except if you were there to hunt it, Winchester rule number 3, just after; shoot first, ask questions later and always aim for the heart. 

Sam hadn’t been supposed to be there, he’d gotten his elbow broken just a month ago on a sirene case but their father had wanted him to learn how to terminate monsters when you were physically indisposed and it had seemed like a pretty innocuous hunt, something they could have taken care of with their eyes closed. Of course, because they’d always been lucky motherfuckers, the sanatorium had been a real maze, and a dangerous one with that. Their father had gotten stuck in the cracked floorboards and one of the large windows had shattered everywhere when the wraith had screamed and attacked. Thankfully, no shards had gotten lodged in any soft body parts but Dean had gotten knocked down and the wraith has tried to strangle him, it had also banged his head on the ground a few harsh times for good measures and Sam, with his trembling left arm, had taken a shot that wasn’t as straight and secure as usual. By the time their father had gotten himself out of the floor, Dean’s head had been ringing and Sam, the reckless idiot, had run out of the room to find what the wraith wanted, not before making a cute salt circle around Dean’s unconscious body, _weirdo_.

The wraith had wanted a child and Dean had never learned how Sam had gotten to that conclusion, but his younger brother had been able to trick the spirit by dropping his gun and crying. It was a crazy plan and if Dean had been there, he’d have probably strangled his nerd of a brother himself, but the wraith had been fooled. It had appeared in front of Sam, at first still a shadow of itself before becoming more of a vision of the woman it had once been, and it had dried Sam’s tears. That was how Dean and his father had found him, on his knees, the wraith’s hands softly wiping tears off his cheeks before disappearing forever in a flash of light. It had been one of the strangest hunts Dean had ever been on and it had disturbed Sam’s sleep for months afterwards.

He wondered idly if it would be the case here too, if he’d have to restore the town’s faith or go on some other type of supernatural pilgrimage to please the entity that haunted these grounds. Before the apocalypse, the angels and all that bullshit, religion hadn’t been that present in his job, apart from that healer in Nebraska and that fake angel ghost in Rhode Island, the things he hunted were usually pretty faithless, which suited him perfectly. It was Sam who’d brought a concept of belief back in the job, which shouldn’t have annoyed Dean the way it did, freedom of faith and all that, but it was more the irony behind it that had and still upset him. Sam had believed in it so much, had wanted so badly to be good, to do the right thing in the eyes of God and Heaven had answered his prayers with ushered words about his abominable destiny and a request of sacrifice. Maybe Dean’s bitterness towards angels was gratuitous, he didn’t want to analyse too much why that felt like self-hatred either, but all he was certain of was that churches gave him the heebie-jeebies and if he could wrap this up as quickly as possible, he’d be fucking thrilled.

He made his way towards the back of the church, ignoring the questioning and suspicious looks thrown his way when he went off the plowed path to get to the small, but admittedly creepy as hell, cemetery surrounded by snow and frozen grass behind the building. He wasn’t entirely sure of what he was looking for yet, and if his father had still been alive that would have been reasons enough to get his ass kicked, but usually, wraiths left traces of their passage.It would probably be a little hard to track in the snow, but Dean was nothing if not a professional and he wasn’t just tracking the wraith here, he was tracking a man too. He inspected the tombstones around, most of them were old and faded, the names almost smooth on the marble, but there was one that seemed pretty recent, on the far left corner. 

The stone was a green and blue color that Dean would have called tacky if it didn’t feel a little too disrespectful to judge a dead person’s color palette. The deceased was named Joshua Watts, born in 1990, a loving son and friend. There was a small photo just below the man’s name and Dean was momentarily stunned by how young he looked, sure, twenty-two was quite early to pass away, but this guy looked like a kid. He had round pink cheeks, a large smile and an animated look in his eyes, almost buoyant. Dean tried to remember what he had looked like at twenty-two but the memories were too blurry. He tried to remember what Sam had looked like instead, just when he’d come to pick him up from Stanford. Had Sam looked so boyish? It was hard to say, but it seemed to him that Sam had always carried himself with more maturity, even when he was a child. He could be a bright-eyed kid at times, but there was always an edge behind it, something cold and determined that Dean had never seen in other people. 

He bent down to examine the tombstone more closely, there were no specks of ectoplasm but that would have probably been too easy. However, the earth around the grave was dark, darker than in any other area of the cemetery. It had been dug up recently, either by a hunter or by an undertaker, but it looked solid as if it had frozen too. The flowers on the tomb were recent, telling by the state of the paper wrapper surrounding them, but they had wilted.

He tried to pick up a rose out of a bouquet and the bud shrivelled, then turned to dust in his hands, “Jackpot.” He smirked, wiping his fingers off on his jacket then he stood up and made his way back towards the entrance of the church, it was time to seduce the locals. 

He noticed a woman looking at him from her parked car, a white Toyota Sienna which should be considered an act of crime against automobiles if you asked Dean’s opinion. She seemed to be in her mid-forties, her hair was blond but lighter on the top while the bottom looked almost brown. She had big sunglasses covering most of her face but Dean could easily guess that she was looking at his chest, which, _okay_. He almost sighed, then reminded himself that she was still sharing and plastered a smile on instead. 

Dean had learned early on that he was a pretty good looking guy. It sounded terribly arrogant but he knew he fit the conventional norms of male beauty. He’d been told often when he was a kid that he’d be a real heartbreaker, and then when he was older and scamming drunks in dive bars he’d been told quite explicitly what lips like his were good for. His father, who wasn’t a bad looking man either, had told him to use his looks with parsimony. Sure, if you could get a witness to talk a little more with a well-placed wink, you should always go for it, but some people wouldn’t take no for an answer, or wouldn’t wait for an answer and that was something to keep in mind each time you played with fire. When he was younger, Dean had sometimes gotten into situations that could have ended far worse than they did, he’d never really learned when to stop taking a risk, Sam had made him tone it down a bit after coming back from Stanford. Now, he was a lot more careful, maybe because his own libido had decreased exponentially in the past three years, or maybe because he’d never really gotten over Sam’s accusations. His brother had yelled at him after a flirting gig in a bar, something stupid just to get the guy who had been checking Dean’s ass for twenty minutes to drop his wallet, that if he continued this nonsense, Sam would just start doing the same. That had been enough to make Dean question his methods, no way in hell he’d let Sam strut around in sleazy bars with men older than their father trying to get their dirty hands on him. Sam was too good for that.

But Dean wasn’t and past the initial surprise, and sometimes disgust, of recognising these looks of hunger, he’d get his game on. Today was no different, it was just like the receptionist at the Dyersville’s motel, it was a smile, a charged breath to make his lips puffier, a dark look with a tinge of danger and the woman, _“Oh please, call me Cherry, my mother was Cherilyn”_ , was telling him everything about this town and its dirty secrets.

“Joshua was a nice boy,” She’d put her sunglasses in the folds of her dress, her brown eyes were rimmed with blue eyeliner, “Always on time, you know the kind? A good boy who went to mass with his parents. He was a member of the church’s youth during the rest of the week too, trying to get more kids his age to hear the words of God. A lot of young men his age could take example of him.” 

Dean stopped himself from groaning, he had never really liked these holier than thou teenagers who tried to get sanctified instead of doing beer keg stands. “Do you know how he died?”

She wiped at the corner of her eyes, where some of her makeup had started to smudge a bit with the crocodile tears she’d been letting fall, Dean was never certain as to why some people tried to make all disasters about them. “Oh, it was such a tragedy.” She looked at herself in her rearview mirror before continuing, “A car accident. Dreadful stuff. His parents were heartbroken.”

Car accidents were an abrupt and traumatizing way to die, it fit the wraith’s profile. “Was he driving?”

“No, no, Joshua didn’t own a car. Mr and Mrs Watts don’t believe in children having physical belongings, they’re minimalists. It was his girlfriend, Libby Fischer.” She leaned over her car window, her fingers trailing on Dean’s hand. “To be quite honest, I never got why Joshua and Libby were together. She’s one of those teens who listen to _metal.”_ She said it in the same tone someone would have said _puppy murder_ , “She’s always wearing those chains and those satanic crosses. The Watts didn’t like her much from what I hear, probably don’t like her at all now. She lives with her mother out of town, but I’ve never seen her father, I’m not even sure she has one.” She shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “They didn’t make sense, these two, no sense at all.” 

The way her mouth soured at Libby’s name told Dean everything he needed. He knew these types of town, he’d rolled in those types of towns during his entire childhood and he used to be the kid people talked about this way. _Have you seen that boy, with the torn jeans, he lives in the motel down the road. No parents, I hear, just him and his brother, isn’t that strange? I’ve seen their father when they arrived but he left the boys on the sidewalk, shouldn’t we call somebody?_

“Thank you for your help, Cherilyn.” His smile must have been a little too lethal to look attractive, she withdrew her hand. “That was very helpful.”

He ignored her protests, _“Call me Cherry!”_ , and walked back to his car. He let the duffle fall on the passenger seat, he’d been a bit too quick to pick it up, the thrill of the hunt had been too strong, but he guessed that he needed to do a little more investigating before ganging up Casper. He let the purring of the Impala calm him down, her murmur settling something deep in him. It probably said a lot about him, that the growl of his 67’ Chevrolet was more familiar and comforting to him than the memory of his own mother. 

He didn’t think of Mary often, couldn’t really if he didn’t want to lose all motivation, but the past few years had put as much question in Sam’s faith as in his. Sam had believed in God, in a high power designed to protect and console, something to turn to when the nights were harsh and the days were harsher. Dean had believed in his mother, in her sweetness, he’d have written scriptures about the powers of her healing hands on his feverish forehead, he would have sung gospels about her crust-cut sandwiches and the way she held him when he cried. But, just like Sam’s faith, his own had been tarnished by the angels, by God and Heaven. There were things about your parents you shouldn't know, things Dean had known about his father that had made it hard to grieve him properly (and had it been grief-induced anger? When he’d trashed the Impala and made an enemy of his own brother? Or had it been rage at his father’s last words, his father’s last orders; he would never be entirely sure), but he’d always thought that Mary could stay unblemished, that he’d die one day and be carried to Heaven by his own mother. It had been stupid, Sam would have told him so if Sam had any memories of Mary to draw conclusions from, because his mother had been a person, not a divine being, and people were imperfect, people made mistakes, people were complex and complicated in ways that angels couldn’t have fathomed. Learning that his mother had made a deal had shaken him, but he could have understood it, been there, done that, he wasn’t one for judging. But learning that she’d made a deal with _Sam’s life_ instead of her own? That had been the one thing he couldn’t forgive and still now, he had a hard time thinking of her without bitterness overflowing him.

He thought of her now, as he left the parking of the Grace Fellowship, he thought of her faith; he wondered if she had been like Joshua, if between two hunts she’d taken the time as a teenager to stop by mass on Sundays. Sam had never been like that, maybe because he’d been ashamed of it, but Sam had prayed in secrets, and maybe that was sadder. He took a left turn and tried to stop the images of his brother, twenty-two like Joshua, shaking on his knees as he prayed to a God that didn’t listen, would never listen, because their mother had doomed him before his birth. The bitterness came to rest on his tongue like a curse.

* * *

Libby Fischer lived near Desmond Acres, next to the railroad and on an empty plot of land where her letterbox stood alone against the weight of the snow. There were no flowers, no bushes or trees, not even a path of stone or something to show where the Fischers' propriety ended and began. They lived in a trailer, it was decent looking from the outside, clean and well maintained. Dean had lived in trailers far less inviting, like that one back in Milwaukee where Sam and he slept on the integrated table’s leather benches because the place where a bed should have been had been repurposed as a jacuzzi. (After three terrible nights on the benches, Dean had cleaned the jacuzzi entirely, scrubbing it so hard he’d chafed his hands while Sam had run around town, being as many pillows and blankets as they could to make the tub a little comfortable. It hadn’t been so bad after, it had felt a bit like sleeping in a pillowy pit.)

He knocked on the door gently, he didn’t want to spook either Libby or her mother, but he also needed to move quickly. The sun was going to set soon and the wraith would come out, and with it, the mysterious hunter Dean had been tracking. 

It was Libby herself who answered the door, and she looked older than Dean had imagined, or at least not as young as the emo teenager he’d started to envision in his mind. She was quite tall, almost as tall as him, but lithe like a cat. Her bubblegum pink hair was cropped shorter in the back but she had bangs long enough to hide her eyes behind and she was wearing a pentagram necklace, something Dean would have heavily criticized back in the early days but that he found almost amusing now. It wasn’t inverted, like Cherilyn had said, she was wearing in with the spirit’s cusp directed towards her throat. Her left arm was in a cast and there were cuts and bruises all over her face, she looked tired and guilty, Dean knew the feeling.

“Libby Fischer?”

She nodded, always contrite, “Yeah?”

He took out his badge, he’d chosen a US marshals one this time, “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the car accident you were in recently? With Joshua Watts?”

Her eyes dimmed, and she looked close to tears, Dean’s heart instantly leapt in his throat, “I already told everything to the other marshal.” 

A peak of interest colored Dean’s voice, “I’m sorry, it’s just procedure for another agent to come and ask a later statement. Just to check.”

Someone had been here, someone had interrogated this girl recently, he was so eager, he almost vibrated. She let him in without further complaints and Dean noted that the inside of the trailer was as clean as the outside, if not more. It was homey, there were flowers on the dining table and caramel apple scented candles. She offered him a cup of coffee, it was strong and warm, she drank hers with oat milk in a Lilo & Stitch mug. 

“Can you tell me about the accident?” 

She sighed, “I already told the other marshal everything I remembered.”

“You can tell me exactly what you told them,” He made a point of taking his notepad out of his pocket, “I’m not here to upset you, just to make sure my colleague did their job properly.”

That seemed to alleviate some pressure, “Okay,” She took a sip of her coffee, “Well, it happened really quickly. I don’t remember most of it, but me and Josh were coming back from the restaurant, the Italian bistro on Hickory Grove road. It was really dark, and it had started to snow earlier that week so I was a little worried but Josh said we’d be okay and he wanted to go home early to catch the end of a basketball game.” She smiled for a second and the heartbreak in it made Dean’s throat close up. The poor kid. “I was driving really safe, and we were listening to some music on the radio when a truck came out of nowhere on our right.” Her hands tightened around her mug. “I don’t really remember if Josh was wearing his seatbelt or not, it’s all blurry in my head, but I-, I mean I guess he wasn’t.”

“Why do you think that?”

She bit her lip and Dean could tell she was trying hard to stop herself from crying, “He, uh, his-,” She took a shallow breath, Dean’s hands found hers before he could stop himself.

“Take your time.” 

She inhaled once, twice, before continuing. “He was, he was sitting next to me one minute and then, when I, uh, when I woke up on the ambulance’s stretcher, I-I saw him.” 

“You _saw_ him?”

She nodded, maybe she’d seen his spirit before it had the time to get swallowed by the veil, it happened sometimes, witnesses seeing their loved ones ghosts a few seconds after their deaths. “Yeah, I saw, I, I saw the body.”

 _Oh_.

“He was, I didn’t, I mean at first I didn’t recognize him.” His body had been projected out of the car, that’s what she’d been trying to say, “And I asked the doctor if he suffered, but they said, uh, they said he broke his neck on impact, so that it was okay, that he,” Her cheeks were drenched in tears, but she carried on and Dean was overwhelmed for one instant by the courage of this twenty-something kid. “He didn’t feel the fire, he was dead before he caught on fire.”

When she started sobbing then, he didn’t stop her. He let her grab his hand, and he waited until she could speak again.

“It was my fault,” The skin around her eyes was red, “I should have told him no, should have made him go back to his house, he would have been safer there.”

“Had he been living with you for a while?” Cherilyn hadn’t mentioned that in her little rant.

“Yeah, since we turned eighteen.”

Four years, she’d been living with this guy for four years and she had to watch his body go up in flames, Jesus Christ. “When did you start dating?”

She looked embarrassed for a second, “We were, uh, we were engaged.””

Dean blinked, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“No, it’s fine, I didn’t tell the other marshal.” She sobered up for a second, “He didn’t look like he would have cared much anyway. But, to answer your question, Josh and I, we grew up together. We went to the same preschool and I don’t really know when we started dating for real but, but I’ve been in love with him my entire life.” She didn’t look sad when she said it, and maybe that was the power of true love, still feeling it in these moments of immense pain. “Four years ago, he asked me and my mom if we’d let him stay here because his parents,” A dark look, “His parents aren’t good people.” 

“They’re very well-liked by the church people.” Dean pointed out.

“Yeah, they are. They’re the rich type, you know? The type that gives money to the church, to the school all of that, but they didn’t care about Josh. They didn’t know him at all.”

“Is it true that Joshua was involved in a lot of church activities? The youth group for example?”

“Josh was very religious, he truly believed in it all, you know? He thought it was important to share God’s wisdom with other people. He said God would heal all evil and pain.” She snorted, “He used to say that God could forgive all of your sins, even the ones you hadn’t committed and that you would always be loved in His house.”

“It’s a beautiful message.” He felt a spike of guilt in his guts for having judged this kid so quickly.

“Yeah,” She finished her coffee, “God didn’t help him, in the end.”

Dean recognised that sarcasm, he was fluent. “Maybe you’re right.”

She stayed silent for a moment, her eyes searching at the bottom of her empty mug for answers, “It isn’t fair.” She brushed her bangs off her face in anger, “It isn’t fair that he died when so many people, so many bad people get to live.”

Dean looked at her, her tired eyes, her guilt-ridden shoulders. He thought of Joshua’s picture, round cheeks and an easy smile, a believer with an open heart. 

_You’re twenty-two and you watch your brother leave in the rain, you don’t stop him even though he tells you to follow. He’s twenty-two now, and you ripped him away from everything he knew, he watched the woman he loved burn and you carried him out of the front door but you think a part of him died there too. It’s unfair, that he believes in a better world, in a kinder future and he will die for it, he will throw himself into the jaws of Hell for it but he will never see it and nobody will be thankful that your brother believed with his entire heart. Nobody will see his faith and see that he might have believed in God but he believed in humanity, in you, more._

“No,” He smiled back at her, “It isn’t fair.”

It took Libby a good half hour before she let him leave, usually, Dean would have left as soon as he’d gotten the information he needed but the kid needed a shoulder to cry on, or at least someone to listen for a little bit. He drank two more cups of coffee with her before he offered her his number, the real one, and when she said goodbye, her eyes seemed less tired, Dean felt good about it.

“Before I leave.” She held the door as he went down the metal stairs from her door to the street, “You said the other marshal didn’t ask you much questions about Joshua?”

She shook her head, “No, he was a lot more focused on the evidence, I think. He asked me if I had anything of Josh left and he took all of his clothes and his books, said he’d drop them off when the investigation was over.” He wouldn’t, Dean guessed that the hunter had already burned it all. “He was, you know, very _professional_.”

It was the way she said it, like an insult. “You mean a jerk?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” She grinned, then tried to scowl herself silently, “I mean, he wasn’t mean or anything, but he was very cold, very to the point.”

Dean frowned, that didn’t go with what he’d witnessed for himself. The stitches on his side said clinical, but there was some sort of inherent kindness and care in making sure that the person you patched up would wake up to a warm and sunlit room. Maybe Bobby had been right, maybe the man who had saved him really was in Rock Creek at the moment and Dean had lost his time here. A thread of panic wrapped itself around his throat but he ignored it, he smiled at Libby instead.

“Did he leave you a card or a number? A way to contact him?”

She shook her head and Dean finally said goodbye to her. He almost slipped in the snow when he made his way back to the Impala and instantly turned the heater on when he closed the door. 

Case review, because that’s what you did when you really got back in the game, you took the time to link all the clues and make sure you weren’t getting in an impossible situation with nothing else than a salt shell filled shotgun. So, case review; the wraith was definitely Joshua Watts. His faith, the traces around his grave, his sudden death, it all matched. There was also no body to burn and if the hunter on this case was half as good as he seemed, all the kid’s belongings had already been taken care of, which left few options. The first one was that some of Joshua’s things were still at his parents’ and Dean would just need to drive there, flash his badge and ask for it. The second was more complicated and he wouldn’t get into it now. Libby had mentioned that the Watts lived fifteen minutes away from the church, near the historical district. He started the car and took a leap.

* * *

The Watts were, in fact, fucking douchebags. It didn’t take Dean a lot to notice it, actually, it had been pretty immediate. The moment Mrs Watts opened the door she threw him a look as if he was just the dirt under her six inches heels. Dean had felt immense pleasure in watching her bored and haughty glare slip off her face at the sight of his badge. He didn’t show it, but it made him smirk internally.

“We’ve already been in contacts with the police,” Mr Watts told him while his wife served small cups of coffee, one of those from the espresso machines Sam had been obsessed with back when he was sixteen. 

Libby’s coffee was better, Dean kept that to himself. “And I’m sure they have been very thorough, but I’m here to check that everything has been done in the rules.” He downed the coffee in seconds, just like a shot of tequila. Mrs Watts eyed him up and down like he was a criminal. 

“We don’t know anything,” She said, twisting a silver cross pendant between her fingers, “Joshua wasn’t with us when it happened, he was with _her_.”

“You mean Libby Fischer.”

A sneer, “Yes, she stole him from us.” Her husband next to her nodded, “She filled his head with nonsense and he ran away from his family because she asked him to. She did this to him, changed my baby boy, took him away from me and now she _killed_ him.”

There was… a lot to unpack there. “Mrs Watts, the accident wasn’t Libby’s fault. The truck driver was drunk, she didn’t do anything wrong.”

It was welcomed with love and understanding, “Joshua was dead long before he got into that car! He died the night he took off to be with this, this _witch_.”

Dean sighed, he wasn’t going to get anywhere with these people. They were too busy living their perfect lives in their perfect house where the sofas were covered in plastic and all the walls were egg shell white to see their own faults. Joshua hadn’t ran away for love, maybe it had been part of it, but Dean would bet more money on a desperate need for freedom. He’d been in this house for just a couple of minutes but he was already suffocating, he couldn’t have grown up here, it would have made him insane. 

“Mrs Watts,” He disposed of his coffee cup and stood up, “Do you still own any of Joshua’s things?” Confusion, “I mean, a hoodie, a pen, things that were his and only his.”

“He took everything when he left,” Mr Watts answered, he looked calmer than his wife, less angry and more tired. “He only left two books but we already gave them to that other marshal.”

Yep, definitely a hunter then.

“Perfect, that’s what I wanted to hear.” He wasn’t lying, for once. “I’ll leave you to your business now.” 

He didn’t expect Mr Watts to stop him in the hall, he didn’t expect for the man to look so broken either. “Marshal, could you-” He looked small in this grey, winter light. He was not much shorter than Dean, but his shoulders were slumped, his chin was quivering and his eyes were empty. “If you see Elizabeth, could you tell her that I’d like to see her.” 

“You mean Libby?”

The man nodded, “I just-” It was taking an effort, but Dean wasn’t sure if it was because it pained him to actually see Libby _Hooligan_ Fischer in person or because the death of his only son was weighing on him more than he let show in front of his wife. “I’d just like to talk about him, with her, sometime. If she’s okay with it.”

Dean thought of Libby, alone in her trailer while her mom worked, with nothing of her boyfriend and best friend left to keep a hold on. He thought of the way she had held his hand while talking about Joshua, of the look of pure love in her eyes when she mentioned the way he used to sing out of tune the soundtracks of cartoons. “I think she’d like that a lot.”

Mr Watts let go of his hand and Dean left the house, feeling like he might have done more good in one day than he had in months. It was a nice feeling, he wasn’t sure it would last long.

The logical following set of actions was waiting the night, getting back to the cemetery and see if the wraith came out to play or if that other hunter had fried it up good. Dean took the time to get a burrito from a minimart before driving back to the church and parking his car, once again, between two lamp posts. 

The church would empty entirely in less than two hours until then he had time to kill and too many books overflowing his backseat. He munched on his food, it wasn’t hot in the centre, he had only microwaved it for two minutes thirty and not three, but it would make do. He wiped his hands on his jeans and blindly grabbed a book. This one’s title was promising, _Salvation_. He liked the sound of that, he burped and started reading.

_The wind in Colorado was harsh and ceaseless, Sam felt like he would never be warm again. Or maybe it was his father’s presence that chilled him to the bone._

Oh, so, this was after they had found their father, Dean had skipped quite a few books this time, still, he was into it now, he wasn’t gonna stop.

_The walls of John’s motel room were covered with notes, maps, drawings, newspapers articles, weather charts and hieroglyphics. All of it about the demon, the one who had killed his mother, the one who had killed Jess. Sam felt observed by those yellow paper eyes._

_His father was sitting at a cluttered desk, the Colt resting in front of him like an offering to an angry deity. Dean was pacing around the room, if he continued, his feet would make holes in the floorboards._

_“So, this is it.” Their dad said, “This is everything I know.” Sam found the entirety of his research rather weak, but he wasn’t going to say it outright. “Look our while lives we been searching this demon, right? Not a trace, just nothing. Until about a year ago.” He grinned, it was dark, Sam recognized himself too much in it to feel comfortable. “For the first time, I picked up a trail.”_

_Dean, always so easily ready to forgive and move on, “And that’s when you took off.”_

_Their father nodded, Sam’s throat closed. “Yeah, that’s right. The demon must have come out of hiding, or hibernation.”_

_“All right, so what’s this trail about?”_

_“It starts in Arizona, then New Jersey, California.” He was pointing at the map in front of him, Dean observed it with admiration. Jesus fucking Christ. “Houses burned down to the ground. It’s going after families, just like it went after us.”_

_That irked Sam, “Families with infants?”_

_Dean didn’t spare him a glance, (why did that bother him so much?) but his father’s eyes were digging into him. “Yeah, the night of the kid’s six-month birthday.”_

_Something cold in the pit of his stomach, God, why wasn’t Dean looking at him, why did it feel like he was an intruder in his own family?_

_“I was six-months-old that night?” Did he actually know anything about his own life? He hadn’t known that Dean had carried him out of the house either. His life felt like a secret, one he wasn't permitted on._

_“Exactly six months.”_

_He took a sharp breath, he was angry and anger he could work with. “So basically, this demon is going after these kids for some reason? The same way it came for me?” Freak, his mind said, freakfreakfreakmurderefreakfreak. “So, Mom’s death, Jessica’s, it’s all because of me?”_

_Dean finally looked back at him, it didn’t feel like mercy, “We don’t know that Sam.”_

_“Oh really? Cause I’d say we’re pretty damn sure, Dean.”_

_His brother was growing frustrated, good. “For the last time, what happened to them was not your fault.”_

_Sam wanted to tear himself apart, his father looked at them both, he started yelling. “Right! It’s not my fault, but it’s my problem!’_

_“No, it’s not your problem, it’s our problem!’_

_Not if I can help it, Sam thought, not if I can finish this, kill the demon, protect you, keep your away from the fire. Not if I can give you what you want, the demon dead and dad back, a perfect life._

_“Okay,” Their father stood up, “That’s enough!”_

_Sam forced himself to breathe in and out, he didn’t want to fight with Dean, not really. “So, why is he doing this? What does he want?”_

_His father looked contrite for a second, “Look, I wish I had more answers, I do. I’ve always been one step behind it. I’ve never gotten there in time to save-” He stopped himself, unhappy guilt, Sam knew the feeling._

_“Alright, so how do we find it before it hits again?” Dean, keeping the peace alive, it was his second nature at this point._

_“There are signs,” John said, “It took me a while to see the pattern but it’s there. In the days before these fire signs crop up in an area. Cattle deaths, temperature fluctuations, electrical storms and I want back and check and-”_

_“These things happened in Lawrence,” Dean concluded._

_“A week before your mother died. And in Palo Alto, before Jessica.” Just her name made Sam want to vomit, he wondered if the ache would ever disappear. He almost wished it wouldn’t, he deserved this. “These signs, they’re starting again.”_

_Sam’s heartbeat picked up, hammering away in his chest. “Where?”_

_John looked at him, “Salvation Iowa.”_

Dean remembered this hunt like it was yesterday, he could still taste the sulfur on his lips just thinking about it. Salvation wasn’t actually too far away, just a few hours on the road to the East and this all felt a little too much like destiny for Dean’s comfort.

He didn’t like Sam’s inner voice here either, didn’t like the way Sam thought about himself or how he had felt the need to shelter Dean for some reason. That had never been Sam’s job, Dean was the one supposed to put his brother before anything else, not the other way around. He skipped some scenes, mainly the ones of random people doing things, Chuck liked to _worldbuild_ a bit too much, Dean didn’t care about anybody else other than Sam. He found a scene between both of them, a conversation in a motel.

_Dean paced while holding his phone to his ear, listening to it ring out. Sam watched him from his spot on the bed, sullen._

_“C’mon dad, answer your phone, damn it.” He hanged up, “Something’s wrong.”_

_Sam turned his gaze towards the wall, his mouth souring._

_A huff, “You hear me? Something’s wrong.”_

_“If you had just let me go in there,” Sam could still taste the ashes, could feel the fire around his ankles, “I could have ended all this.”_

_“Sam, the only thing you would have ended was your life.”_

_Gosh, his brother could be a fucking pain, “You don’t know that.”_

_Dean walked towards the bed, placing himself in front of Sam’s open legs, “So, what? You’re just willing to sacrifice yourself, is that it?”_

_Sam jumped up, “Yeah! Yeah, you’re damn right I am!’_

_“Well, that’s not going to happen, not as long as I’m around.” Dean had the audacity to stare at him like he was crazy, like he was the one changing the rules of the game._

_“What the hell are you talking about, Dean? We’ve been searching for this demon our whole lives! It’s the only thing we’ve ever cared about!”_

_His brother raised his hands in frustration, “Sam, I wanna waste it! I do, okay? But it’s not worth dying over!”_

_Sam couldn’t have heard right, no, “What?”_

_“I mean it! If hunting this demon means getting yourself killed then I hope we never find the damn thing!”_

_Sam felt his blood heat up in his veins, like lava, “That thing killed Jess, that thing killed mom!”_

_Dean looked at him and there was pity in his eyes, what a fucker. “You said yourself once, that no matter what we do, they’re gone, and they’re never coming back.”_

_Sam saw red, he felt himself grab Dean’s collar and shove him hard against the wall. They were close, so close Sam could feel the heat of Dean’s skin and smell the earthy notes of his cologne, it broke him even further. “Don’t you say that, not you! Not after all this, don’t you say that!”_

_Dean looked at him, his eyes were so green, Sam remembered being five years old and trying to draw his brother but never finding the right shade to color in his eyes. Had his world always been trying to grab a hold of pieces of Dean but not being able to keep them? He wasn’t certain he’d ever know._

_“Sam, look,” His brother’s voice was soft and quiet, “The three of us, that’s all we have, and it’s all I have.” Dean was close to tears, the realisation pierced Sam’s heart, “Sometimes I feel like I’m barely holding it together man, and without you or dad-”_

_Fuck, fuck their dad was still out there, their dad was lost out there and Sam was too busy feeling sorry for himself, what a good son he made._

_“Dad,’ He whispered as he let go of Dean and turned away, walking across the room. He didn’t trust himself to be in Dean’s close perimeter. There was still too much heat in his guts, slowly dripping to his loins and he wouldn’t do this, he couldn’t or he’d really throw himself into a fire. “He should have called by now, try again.”_

_His brother flipped his phone open and Sam sat back down on the bed, he tried to think of his father, of their family and not of the darkness that was slowly but surely making its dent into his soul._

Dean closed the book, breath short, he wasn’t entirely certain of how he should take what he’d just read. He remembered that fight, but it was Sam’s ardor that disturbed him. In those last few lines, it had almost seemed like something more, something that Dean knew was impossible because this was _Sam_. Chuck was a shit writer who made a fucking fuzz over adrenaline rushes, untalented pervert. 

He threw the book behind back again and looked out of his window; the parking had emptied nicely except for a black Dodge Charger on his far left. It was a good car, powerful (not as much as Baby, but that was almost impossible, Baby was made of divine materials.) and it clashed with the soccer mom vans he’d been seeing all day. Before he could try to read the plate, he was blinded by car lights, someone was parking, someone driving a clearly rented orange Mazda. Dean saw the driver get out, and he recognized the pink hair before anything else, then he recognized her stars-striped hoodie. He watched Libby Fischer limp her way to the church, and he followed suit when the doors banged behind her.

“Libby!” He called out, rushing inside. This was dangerous grounds, the wraith would be here soon, if it wasn’t gone already and the chances it attacked Libby directly were great. A wraith would instantly turn against the people it had known in its past life, good or bad. Libby could die here, Dean wouldn’t let her.

The church was modern in the worst sense of the word, Dean wasn’t religious, or fan of religious symbolism in general but even he could admit that they lucked out with the aesthetics of it. Iowa’s Grace Fellowship didn't seem to agree, all the walls were white and covered in minimalist metal crucifixes. Libby was standing in the middle of the aisles, she was shivering and Dean could see his own breath. 

The wraith was here. 

“Marshal? What are you doing here?” Libby frowned, she had her phone in her hand. “Are you working with the other marshal? Why did you need me here?”

He raced to her, grabbing her shoulders, “Libby, listen to me, you gotta get out of here, _now_.”

“What? What do you mean? What’s going on?”

He wasn’t armed, shit, he only had his gun and Ruby’s knife, but he’d left the duffle in the car like an idiot, god, Sam would have laughed at this. You organise duffle bags to take on hunts so you can dash somewhere and not be defenceless and _you forget the duffle_.

The scent of dirt filled the air, cold and grungy in the church’s humidity, the wraith would appear soon and then it would tear them apart, what a dumb way to die, and in the ugliest church on this side of the world too.

“Libby, please you got to trust me, run.”

“I don’t understand, what’s going on here? Your colleague-”

Something moved on his right, hidden behind curtains, he pushed Libby behind him, drawing his gun. He aimed, but his arm shook when the curtains parted.

“ _Dean_.”

No, no, this wasn’t possible, he was hallucinating. Wraiths could do that too, if they were really powerful, they could make you see things, good things to make you more compliant. Joshua’s wraith hadn’t seemed strong enough for it but it was the only rational explanation. He’d dreamed of this, of course, he’d hoped, but like you hope for an impossible thing, like a flying car, one million dollars and now, apparently, Sam.

Sam, Sammy, alive and standing here, a shotgun in hand and his hair falling in his eyes. 

“ _Sammy_?” He choked out, this wasn’t possible and yet this was his brother’s golden skin and twitching beauty mark on his cheek. This was his brother’s hazel eyes and long lashes, Dean felt his legs give out from under him.

“Shit.”

“Marshal? Marshal? Are you okay?”

He couldn’t answer, his lips felt heavy, his tongue was numb, Sammy ran to him and his hands, god it was his hands, his strong and able hands grabbed Dean and pulling him up.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice in his ear, _SamSammySamSamSam_ , “Dean, I know this is a shock, but you got to snap out of it, the wraith is coming.”

“Can someone tell me what the fuck is happening?!”

Sam’s eyes focusing on Libby, Sam telling her to calm down, telling her he’d been the one to text her to come here because she needed to get rid of her guilt, to say goodbye. Sam, Sammy, Sam holding Dean up and not letting go. Dean was dead, he’d died on that werewolf hunt and now he was roaming Heaven.

“Your boyfriend’s spirit turned into a wraith, a nasty ghost, when he died,” Sam explained, and his voice was colder than Dean remembered, more straight-forward, but it was okay because it was Sam’s, Sam, Sammy. “I burned all of his things, but he’s still tied to this world and I think he’s waiting for you to finally admit you had nothing to blame yourself for.”

“You’re insane!” Libby screamed, Dean’s feet found some feeling back, he tried to get back up and Sam held him. He almost fell back down from the joy that caused him.

“I wish,” He uttered out, he felt so out of it, “But he’s right, Joshua is still here, his soul is still here trying to move on but it can’t, because the person he loved the most blames herself for his death.”

“When she did nothing wrong,” Sam added, and it took Dean a tremendous effort not to whimper. “You did nothing wrong, Libby, you didn’t kill him.”

“You don’t know that!” She yelled, the surrounding cold was becoming unbearable, “I should have been more careful, I should have made sure nobody was coming before I took that turn.”

“You couldn’t have stopped a six-thousand-pound truck, Libby,” Sam let Dean fall on one of the benches, he cocked his gun, just in case Dean figured. “Some accidents are just bound to happen, and it’s nobody’s fault.”

“He didn’t deserve to die!” She was crying, Dean was surprised her teardrops didn’t form crystals. 

“No, he didn’t.” She looked back at him and it was a mirror, the pain, the grief in her eyes. “But he did, and it wasn’t your fault.” 

She stifled a few sobs, “You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t.” He tried to stay focused on her, but he wanted to turn to Sam, to grab his brother’s hand just to make sure he was still there. “But Mr Watts seems to think so.” She blinked, surprised. “You know what he said to me? _Please ask her if we could talk about him together_. He knew you loved him, Libby, and Josh knew it too.”

She dropped to the floor, her hands pressed against her face, “It hurts so much, all of it hurts so much without him.”

“That’s normal,” He whispered, and he thought of Sam, Sammy right next to him, who he’d been dreaming about for weeks, “But the pain, it doesn’t mean you were to blame.”

“It just means you loved him, Libby.” Sam said.”And you have to forgive yourself, you have to let him go.”

She did.

For an instant, Dean thought it would go south, the air was almost frosty, he could barely keep his eyes open, but then a warm light emerged from the ground and enveloped them three. He heard Libby gasp and then it was gone, all of it was gone. Joshua was at peace, he’d moved on.

_You have to move on, Dean, you have to forget about me and you have to find something better for yourself. Go to Lisa’s, make yourself a life. Go on, Dean, move on from me._

He would have to. He barely didn’t hear Libby thank them before she left the church, he didn’t wait for the sound of the doors closing before he jumped on his brother and hugged him so close he thought he heard one of his ribs pop.

“Dean-”

Soap and coffee, soft hair and softer voice. He was crying, he didn’t care, the stitches on his side ached and sang, he pressed a kiss to Sam’s forehead.

“Sammy, Sam, you’re here, you’re alive.”

“Dean, wait-”

He embraced Sam harder, his arms straining against the effort, he felt something dribble down his side; it took him a long moment to figure out he’d just torn his sutures open and was now bleeding out. He only understood it when his legs went limber again and he didn’t really care. He felt Sam’s hand on his face, he heard his name, and warm blood soaked his shirt as he fainted, the image of Sam, alive and okay, engulfed him completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are, as always, much appreciated!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and happy holidays!
> 
> i'm so sorry this is such a late update (and such a small chapter) but this one was really hard to write for me and i was supposed to add more but i divided this chapter in two parts instead, i just really wanted to post for christmas and so here we are!
> 
> i hope you will still enjoy this chapter anyway and that you will enjoy whatever festivity you're celebrating as well!

The first thing Dean noticed when he opened his eyes was the curtains, the purple, retro graphic curtains that looked like they came right out of an 80s arcade and they were thin enough to let out a constant stream of light directly onto his face. The second thing he noticed was his brother.

Sam was sitting next to him, he had a book open on his lap, a thick, leather-bound register he flipped through idly. He looked so tall in the sunlight, his shoulders were a straight, strong line against the head of his chair. His skin was tan, just as it had been back in 05 when he was right out of Palo Alto and his hair was shorter than it had been last time Dean had seen him, right before he had jumped in the cage. It wasn’t like the bangs he used to have, and which Dean had mocked heavily, but it was curly on the ends and it parted around his face softly, it made him look younger and in the sun it almost looked golden. 

It was a strange dream, but a pleasant one at least. These past few months, when Dean had let himself dream of his brother, it always turned into a bloody memory. He would dream of hunts but they all ended badly, or he’d see Lucifer dressed in white and holding a rose to his lips, but this was different, this was peaceful. 

He tried to reach Sam, extending a hand to touch, to feel his warmth before he woke up, but he felt something strain on his side and he groaned in pain, troubling his brother and making him close his book.

“Dean,” Sam’s voice was perfect, it was exactly right and once again he was shocked by the accuracy of his dream. The last time he’d dreamt of Sam, his brother’s voice had been all wrong, clipped and cold, like a rendition given by a machine. But here, it was Sam, it was his low, warmhearted tone with this edge of gular he’d grown into when he was sixteen. “Don’t move, you’re going to pull on your stitches.” Sam got his chair closer and Dean noted that he was, in fact, lying on a bed and that he was shirtless. 

It was a bizarre choice from his mind to have imagined a scenario where Sam patched him up, not that it was that unusual, they’d been in this position quite a few times, but he would have preferred something else, some stargazing maybe, or a simple morning where his abdomen wasn’t torn up. No matter, this was a dream and the sutures in his flesh meant nothing when Sam was close enough to touch. He reached again and wrapped his hand around his brother’s wrist. He felt a pulse, and that was just a cruel detail, he wished he wasn’t that thorough.

Sam shook his grip loose, “Dean, c’mon, work with me here.”

Dean frowned, he grabbed Sam again, pulling him forward, this was his dream, his imagination, he wanted to feel his brother, he wanted to hold him close before he had to let him go again. Sam yelped a little and fell on the bed, on Dean’s chest, he was so big that Dean could have hidden under him completely.

“Dean, what are you doing?” The words were muffled, Sam’s mouth was pressed to Dean’s neck and to the pillow underneath his head, “This isn’t really how I imagined our reunion, you know?”

Dean smiled, trust his mind to respect Sam’s brand of mockery, “Sammy.” He whispered, tugging his little brother even closer, encircling his rigid back with his arms and molding himself around Sam. He ignored the pain in his side and Sam’s indignant yapping and instead took the time to breathe in his brother’s scent.

The salt of sweat on his skin, the fragrance of expensive shampoo in his hair, that clean soap smell and coffee, roasted beans, dark and bitter but warm and comforting on the tongue. It was perfect, once again, totally perfect. He could even pick up the faint smell of iron and gunpowder that never really left either of them.

Soap and coffee.

Stitches.

He felt his smile freeze on his face. He released his brother of his embrace and hooked a hand around Sam’s neck; he needed to see his face, he needed to see, to look.

“Jesus, Dean-”

He could never get Sam’s eyes right, in his mind, he could never get the entire color palette, the shade of green was always wrong. Sam’s green was made of more yellow than blue, always had been, but in his mind Sam’s eyes were jade green, a muted, almost pastel shade that came of nothing real and here, here it was _perfect_.

He felt his chest expand, his heart was beating too quickly and his breath was coming out all wrong, he was choking on nothing, and Sam’s face was still so close, he was still so so close and so real. 

“Dean, hey, _hey_ , calm down.”

But he couldn’t and he yanked Sam to get his head back in the space between his shoulders and his throat, but Sam pushed back, he put his hand on the hard surface of the bed and disjointed them. Dean tried to hold on, but Sam was stronger and he was suffocating, his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, his ears were ringing and he had the almost amusing realisation that this was a panic attack. Sam had been prone to them as a teenager, and then as a grieving ex-college student, but Dean had always been more of a swallow the pain and the fear down, wash it down with whiskey and let it haunt you in your sleep. This was new, a novelty of fucked up. 

Sam’s palm found his cheek, and Dean fought the urge to sink his teeth into the tender flesh of it. He wondered if it would calm him down, to lick Sam’s blood off his lips, it was almost, if not more, familiar than his own. Metal on his tongue, like a bullet, a taste of home.

“Calm down.” The hand on Dean’s face curled slightly, brushing under his eye. Sam’s voice was soft, but it didn’t sound genuine, as if he knew how to appear comforting and kind, but it lacked meaning. He seemed trained in it, this act of compassion that had come naturally to him before, he was clinical in his empathy which wasn’t _right_. Everything else about Sam had been perfect until now. His face, his hair, his scent, his tone and how he moved, but the way he talked, the way his voice sounded empty was wrong. It was all wrong, Sam was always bursting at the seams with feelings, even when they were supposed to play FBI agents he’d let his voice quiver when he spoke with witnesses. Sam’s voice, it held significance. You could always tell what Sam felt by listening to him talk, which was why he would give you the stony stare and tight-lipped snark each time he felt hurt because he couldn’t hide it even if he tried. It had always been like this, from the moment Sam had started walking and talking. At three years old Sam would give you declarations of love so sweet they drizzled and stuck to you like caramel. At thirteen, Sam’s anger would sizzle in the air when he spoke, you could feel the fire under his tongue and each time he directed it towards you, you’d be left nursing red raw burns all over. There was no way to escape Sam’s emotions, Dean had tried to run away from them quite a few times, Sam himself had tried to as well, but you were brought back to them each time Sam opened his mouth, it was just a way of life. A Winchester truth you learned to live with; being near Sam meant you would get waves of joy, guilt, sadness, pride, washing over you once in a while.

And yet, here Dean felt nothing. And maybe he could blame it on his own mind, maybe this was a dream and he just couldn’t mentally grasp what Sam’s reaction would be to play it out, but he had the building awareness that maybe, just maybe this wasn’t as surreal as he had first believed. The pain in his side wasn’t dull enough, pain in hell had been excruciating to the point where he couldn’t recognise if it was really pain anymore, pain in his dreams felt blunt, like a finger you’d press in a yellow-green bruise. And Dean was familiar with all of them, all this pain, he knew the one that broke your bones, he knew intimately the type of suffering your own mind could create, he knew them all, but this wasn’t it. This was simple, there was no edge to it, no layers of Hell’s purulent torture nor any of his own head’s toxic hatred.

This was real, this was Sam, alive and warm between his hands, this was no Hell, this was no dream and Dean felt himself get dizzy.

“Sammy?’ He choked out, pressure building behind his eyes, the threat of tears making him more alert.

His brother, his baby brother with the dimples and the beauty marks, gave him a soft smile. All cotton candy lips.

“Hey, Dean.”

They were still close enough that Dean could feel Sam’s breath on his skin.

“Is this Heaven?” He asked, watching his brother snort in response. The tip of Sam’s nose was pink, something in Dean twisted sharply. He hadn’t stayed long enough in Heaven to know how it worked there, how pain felt. This was real, that he knew, but it didn’t mean it was true. 

Sam watched him, he seemed amused, the blue of his shone brightly. “Not that I know of.” 

Dean tried to get a hand around his brother’s wrist to bring him closer, Sam held on.

“Sammy-”

“We have to get up, Dean, I’m not sure Libby Fischer didn’t call the actual cops on us.”

Libby, the wraith, it came back to him in a flash. Sam’s quick fingers around a gun, not his gun, not the Taurus. Sam was alive and he was hunting. Alone.

“Sam,” His brother stood up, detangling them from each other, Dean tried to reach him again. He would have been ashamed of his own behavior, this please-love-me-touch-me shtick if this hadn’t been _Sam_ , alive, walking and talking, when every logical thought Dean could muster placed his baby brother in Hell.

He lifted himself up, his hands chased Sam’s, and he caught two of Sam’s fingers in his palm. The stitches in his side screamed. His brother stared at him then smirked, with still tow fingers captured, he bent down and grabbed a water bottle where rosary beads floated and a salt shotgun shell from near Dean’s bed. 

“Give me back my hand so we can do this properly.”

Dean had it in him to protest, but reason took over and he let his brother pierce the shell with the tip of a pocket knife before watching him swallow down salt and water. He didn’t say anything when Sam moved the knife towards himself, making the smallest line of red on his tan skin, but when he saw the blood trickle down the side of his brother’s arm, Dean gritted his teeth. They’d done this a thousand times before, but he didn’t want Sam’s body to be scarred again. He wanted his brother to stay immaculate.

When Dean had come back from Hell, he’d been rooted out of the pit with all of his limbs attached and every single blister and scab erased. He’d almost mourned them, if he was being honest, he hadn’t been in any position to complain because it was just a detail in the whole coming back alive from Hell business but he’d grown font of the flaws on his body. He particularly missed a scar he had on his left knee, an ugly huge one that had never truly turned white. It seemed strange when he thought about it like that, but this had been one of his only non-hunting related wound, he’d gotten it while playing baseball in a small Ohio town back in 91. He still remembered the aftermath, his teammates lifting him up on their shoulders and celebrating their win, and Sam, barely eight, running from the bleachers with a pack of dinosaur band-aids. He missed that scar like he’d missed that kid, this boy who still thought of him as a superhero and laughed at everything his big brother said.

“It’s really you,” He said as Sam wrapped gauze around his arm. “Sammy, you got out.”

Sam looked at him, the shadow of a smile in his eyes, not fully there, not fully honest either, “Yeah, Dean, that’s what I tried to tell you before you went all teddy bear on me.”

Dean laughed, a genuine, wholehearted laugh that bordered on hysterical. He was standing now and it was much easier to grab Sam and suffocate him in another hug. Dean found his brother’s shoulders, constricting them in his embrace, he waited for Sam’s nose to find the crook of his neck, like it usually did each time they hugged like this, shifting in a position that almost made Sam smaller than his _big_ brother. Dean waited, but Sam only laid his chin on Dean’s naked shoulder, breaking traditions and making him feel all unbalanced, the fucker.

Dean took a step back, one of his hand cradled Sam’s cheek, he wanted to take in the sight in front of him, all of it, while the other stayed on his brother’s arm. Sam huffed and puffed but let himself get manhandled for a few minutes, not for too long though.

“Are you done?”

Dean patted his cheek, “Are you in a rush? Can’t I make sure that my own brother is okay when he’s fresh out of Hell?”

“We need to hit the road and fast,” Sam replied, knocking Dean’s hand off his face, “I told you, Libby, cops, we gotta get out of here.”

“Easy now,” Dean sat back down, he could see some blood on the sheets now that he was sitting and he had a passing thought for the poor dude who would have to clean this place once they left. “You gotta tell me what happened, Sammy, you gotta tell me how you got out.”

Sam ignored him and grabbed something out of an open duffle, it was a clean shirt, he threw it at Dean’s head. “We’ll talk in the car, get ready.” He threw Dean’s pair of boots at his feet. “I’m driving by the way.” Before Dean could protest, Sam hushed him, “I took your keys out of your jacket when I patched you up, _again_ , this isn’t an argument, I’m just telling you how it’s gonna be.”

He grabbed his duffle and his book which was still on the table and he walked out of the room. Dean felt himself smile wide, trust Sam to still be a pain in the ass.

* * *

The Impala was packed with shit Dean had never seen before, bags of weapons and books, he even spotted some weights thrown in there. 

“Did you move out of your parents’ basement or something?”

Sam didn’t turn his eyes away from the road but he flicked at Dean’s chest with his right hand, the other one still on the steering wheel.

“I moved my things out of my car, asshole, I figured you’d rather only take one and that leaving the Impala behind wasn’t an option.”

“The fact you even thought about it is already a crime, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam,” He said and if smiles could create electricity, Dean’s would have powered the whole of North America. 

“Where are we going anyway? You taking me somewhere fancy?”

“Sioux Falls fancy enough for you or do I need to plan a trip to the largest ball of twine?”

Dean laughed again, he’d almost forgotten how good it felt.

They drove for a while without saying anything, with the radio off, Dean was just satisfied to watch Sam. He didn’t even hide it, he was fully turned towards his brother, he scanned each of Sam’s features with hunger, he took in the shape of Sam’s fingers, his wrists, his neck, the line of his nose, the roundness of his mouth. Maybe it was creepy, probably, but he couldn’t help it.

Sam turned right at an exit and his shirt rolled up, just by an inch but enough for Dean to catch the sight of a scar on Sam’s abdomen. The tail of his appendix cicatrice, Dean had been there for it, had driven him to the hospital when Sam was fourteen.

A scar.

“Sam,” His brother still didn’t look at him, Dean’s breath quickened, “How did you come back?”

More silence, so much more silence, it made Dean feel claustrophobic. Sam sighed but didn’t answer.

“Sammy?”

“I don’t know, Dean.” Sam looked at him, just a glance but it soothed something in Dean to see the color in his eyes, all green and blue, no demonic black or yellow. “One second I was downstairs and then the next I was standing in Stull Cemetery. I have no idea how it happened.”

“Well, was it the angels? Was it Cas?” Maybe it wasn’t as easy to recreate a body when it came back from Lucifer’s cage, maybe Cas had needed to settle on just fixing what he could find. But if had been Cas, why hadn’t he said anything, why did he let Dean believe that Sam was still in the cage when the idiot was here.

Another thought hit him and with it the nasty taste of anger spread on his tongue. “How long have you been hunting?”

More silence.

“How long have you been back, Sam?”

The corner of his brother’s mouth turned, “About a year.”

Dean understood the word, he heard it correctly, but he couldn't understand the implications, couldn’t accept what it meant, “A year?” Blood pounded in his temples, anger gave to rage then to a sort of defeated sadness. “You’ve been back for a year and you,” Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, hard, Sam watched but said nothing. “You’ve been back for a whole year and you let me believe you were _dead_?”

Sam murmured, “It wasn’t like that.” He didn’t seem guilty, he wasn’t shifty like he usual was when it was the case, Dean felt his knuckles itch with the need to hit something.

“Then how was it like, Sam?” He barked, if they’d been younger and wilder, Dean would have bitten him.

“You were happy! I saw you with Lisa and I couldn’t do that to you, Dean!” 

More anger and an even bigger need to turn towards violence to alleviate the tension in his body, “You _saw_ me with Lisa? What? You were on my porch like a kicked puppy? Was it like that Sam? Uh? What kept you from _ringing the fucking doorbell_?”

Sam finally looked at him, “I told you! You finally had what you wanted, Dean and I couldn’t take that from you! Not again!”

“I wanted my brother alive!” Dean screamed, he absently thought that if he’d been the one driving, he might have sent them both in a tree. “I wanted you! By my fucking side, Sam! You have no idea what life was like, you have no idea what being with Lisa was like, you fucking jerk!”

“Oh boohoo, Dean, you were living with a woman who liked you in a beautiful house, I can feel your pain from here.” A pause and then, cruelty, “Please tell me how awful being with Lisa was, Dean, I was only in Hell.”

It knocked the wind out of Dean’s lungs and for one blissful second, he hated his brother more than he loved him. “You’re a fucking bitch.”

“Right back at you.”

Another sigh, deep and annoyed, “Listen, I did what I thought was right.” Sam said, “I understand why you’re upset, I do, but I just wanted you to be okay.”

Dean didn’t know what to say, he had a thousand words on the tip of his tongue but none of them felt right. How could he possibly explain how his beautiful, safe and normal suburban life had sucked the soul out of him?

_I couldn’t speak after you fell, I could barely breathe. I couldn’t sleep, I counted the minutes while you were gone, I still count them now even though you’re next to me. I read our lives on paper, just to feel you close to me, I read even the moments where we were broken and bloody because at least we were together. I missed you, I missed you, god, Sammy, I still miss you now._

“Just drive.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the road and when Dean finally saw the sign telling them they were now in South Dakota, he wondered if they would ever have something to say to each other again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a tumblr now, come talk to me about this fic or about the winchester brothers [here](https://itstartswithbloodshed.tumblr.com/) !
> 
> comments are deeply appreciated!!
> 
> -dnw


End file.
